A Winner Is Two: Desperate Struggle
by avatarjk137
Summary: Travis Touchdown is contracted by a mysterious agency to enforce the rules at their deathmatch survival tournament, A Winner Is Two. Will he be able to keep the contestants - and his own thirst for blood - in line? Rated for violence and language.
1. Intro

**For those of you who don't know what this is all about, it's a character introduction for **_**A Winner Is Two,**_** my CCT (Canon Character Tournament). I'm hosting a tournament of fanfiction authors in the spirit of friendly competition – last author standing gets a story request from me. You can find a link to the forum on my profile, if you're interested. All you have to do is choose a character, write their entry into the tournament, and write fight scenes that will be judged against those of other writers.**

**Specifically, this is the entry for Travis Touchdown, as an Enforcer. Since I'm hosting the tournament, I'm entering characters to keep the rules in line rather than to have any possibility of winning. I actually think this is one of my best works, especially the first two-thirds or so.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters within. I do own this tournament, Grand Cross Isle, and the organization BORED, if not any of its members. I merely own the contents of this story.**

**A Winner Is Two: Desperate Struggle**

**Chapter 1**

**Prelude to Madness**

Deep within the residential complex BORED had carved into a cliffside, a man was singing in the shower. But this wasn't just any man singing off-key anime tunes in the relative privacy of a bathroom; this man was an Enforcer. The first-ranked assassin in America, BORED had handpicked him for his skill, strength, sheer resilience in the face of overwhelming injury, and ruthlessness. But right now he was just a man rubbing Head and Shoulders into his black hair, his pale, freckled face screwed up as he sang. "Benribenri banzai benribenri banzai benribenri banzai ningen! Benribenri banzai benribenri banzai benribenri banzai ningen! Hora biribiri okorasuka? Biribiri okorasuka? Biribiri okorasuka? Ningen! Hora biribiri okorasuka? Biribiri okorasuka? Biribiri okorasuka? Ningen!"

Suddenly, the sliding door of the shower was pulled open with enough force to crack the pebbled glass panel. "You're going down, man!" A large, long-haired Hispanic man wearing lots of chains and leather and a ninja mask stepped one foot into the shower stall, brandishing a pair of tomahawks. "That number one title will be mine!"

"Jeez! A little privacy!" the other man exclaimed. "I'm wet and naked over here!"

"Too bad, Touchdown! You should have kept your guard up!" the assailant made a swing to behead the showering assassin, but he dropped to the floor and drove a fist into the ax-wielder's knee. Grunting, the assailant braced himself against the stall with one arm and swung downward with the other, but Travis Touchdown rolled out of the way (striking his head against the stall wall in the process), and the assassin only embedded his axe in the drain.

"You're out of your league!" Touchdown snarled, quickly rising and stomping on the assailant's outstretched wrist, eliciting a crack and a cry of pain (both equally satisfying). "Bastard!" He followed up with a punch that connected with the man's nose, and blood began to flow freely from it. "Fuck-head!" Touchdown grabbed the stunned lesser assassin, leaning forward and wrapping his arms around the man's torso. He followed up by lifting the man up and over himself, pulling the man into the shower stall and slamming him down headfirst in a messy suplex. Travis managed to complete the maneuver before slipping on the wet ground and falling on his own ass. He quickly recovered, getting up and out of the stall without bothering to shut off the hot water. Drying off his hands on a towel, he rummaged around the bathroom counter before finally removing the black cylinder that held the toilet paper in his dispenser.

Pressing a button on the side of the cylinder caused segments of it to unfold. In particular, a cap at one end of the cylinder extended outward for over a meter on a thin rod resembling a car antenna. Another button was pressed, and a glowing stream of blue light came into existence between the 'cap' and the rest of the cylinder, giving the whole affair the sudden appearance of a beam sword – the Blood Berry. Satisfied, Travis stepped back into the shower. The assailant was still in the same position: upside-down, balanced on his shoulders and the back of his (probably broken) neck. His face was staring blearily upwards at Travis, his jaw slack, his nose still bleeding and crooked. He gurgled up at the number-one ranked assassin.

"I'll accept those as last words," Travis said coolly. "Now, EAT SHIT!" He brought his beam katana down, bisecting the upside-down man from his groin to his head. "Asshole ruined my shower…" the otaku grumbled, deactivating and putting down the beam katana before he grabbed a towel and began to feverishly dry his hair off. He left the water running; this had happened to him once or twice before, and he knew that if he didn't, the blood could thicken and clog the drain.

Dried off, he went about his business as usual. Replace the toilet paper and the Blood Berry. Wipe down foggy mirror. Brush teeth, apply deodorant. Get dressed; boxers, socks, faded blue jeans, worn sneakers, T-shirt advertising his favorite anime and manga (Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly), brown leather belt, crimson jacket, one leather glove, yellow-lens, white-framed sunglasses, lots of hair gel. Mouthwash, grin at reflection. He looked good. Finally turning off the water, he stared at the two halves of a corpse and shook his head. He'd get rid of him later. Travis was already in a better mood when he left, although he didn't start singing again.

---

"Ah, Mr. Touchdown!" Travis looked up, and found himself waved over to a conversation down the corridor. It was between two men who had been talking animatedly, and Travis would rather have not gotten involved – his bike might need some maintenance, and this tournament was supposed to go down tomorrow. But one of the men, a graying guy with an eyepatch and a powered armor of some sort, was waving him over, and these were the guys paying him, so he headed over. _What was his name… Something Snake? Solidus, right._ "This is Commodore Smoker; he's another of the Enforcers, and he's just arrived."

Travis looked the man up and down. He was a pretty big guy, although not unusually tall or broad, with medium-length hair of a sort of faded green-blue coloration that was about halfway to silver. His jacket was open to a bare chest, revealing an impressive X-shaped scar and a bodybuilder's physique, and he wore an improbably large jitte on his back – Travis doubted it was still very effective for catching blades, at that size. The only other eye-catching thing was that he was smoking – two cigars at once, in fact, which made Travis wrinkle his nose. Normally he wasn't bothered, but… two cigars at once? And his jacket pockets were filled with even more! What kind of addict was this guy?

At the same time Travis had been assessing his new co-worker, Smoker had been doing the same, but he noticed Smoker was now staring at his own eyes, his face registering a bit of surprise. "Take a picture, why don't you," Travis snapped, and Smoker's demeanor hardened again. "What are you Commodore of, anyway? Friends of Lung Cancer?"

"I can't punch him, can I?" Smoker growled.

"I'd rather you two saved your aggression," Solidus muttered impassively. "We've gone to great lengths to obtain the services of each of you for good reason, and it wouldn't do for the tournament to begin with one of you dead and the other wounded." He didn't mention which would be which – trust an ex-President to speak diplomatically.

"Yeah, whatever. It's been great meeting Smokey the Bear, boss, but I have to go take care of –"

"Er, Travis, could I have a word with you?" This voice belonged to the suited, professionally nondescript man known as Ofdensen. Travis sighed; another detour. Besides, he liked that Ofdensen was never rude to him and always let things go without interference unless there was a problem, but of the BORED members present, he had the least appreciation for a good fighter. Travis knew by instinct. "Unless I'm interrupting something?"

"Not at all," Solidus said jovially. Fake joviality – it was all part of his sizing the two Enforcers up, and Travis knew it. Instinct again. "I was just watching a healthy rivalry blossom between two of our Enforcers."

"Well, as long as the 'healthy rivalry' doesn't blossom into 'killing each other'. Speaking of – Travis, would you walk with me?" Uh-oh.

"Sure, why not." Travis turned his back on the old man and the chain-smoker. "Not like I have anything else I should be doing," he said sarcastically.

"I assure you, we'll be done in ten minutes." Travis caught up with the slightly shorter, dark-grey-suited man and matched pace with him. Ofdensen glanced sidelong before continuing. "In case you were wondering, this was about the body that was in your shower."

Travis grumbled wordlessly before articulating a real answer. "Fucker wanted to take my title," he finally said. "He's not the first to try and catch me off-guard. It's a fucking insult; whenever I wanted to advance in rank, I had to pay through the ass so the next assassin up could go wherever they liked for the time and place. I mean, all I ask for is a quick meal at Burger Suplex before you try and kill me, but nobody's ever-" Ofdensen cleared his throat. "…sorry. You were saying?"

"I'm actually here to apologize to you," Ofdensen admitted. "The attacker was Number 513, one of my own men. I hadn't known any of them harbored an interest in the assassin's life."

"Please tell me he wasn't one of your best."

"Hardly. In Fighting Skills class, he got through Klokateer training with a C+. At any rate, it won't happen again, I assure you." Something in Ofdensen's voice indicated that he had indeed taken some rather dramatic steps to assure this. "I do wish you'd let us know immediately, though. I have a clean-up crew working on the bathroom."

"Oh, okay. I'm used to getting rid of any corpses in my bathroom and bedroom by myself, so I was just going to wait until later." Upon further reflection, Travis decided he didn't mind Ofdensen – he was perfectly happy to tell Travis exactly what he needed to do, exactly what the pay would be, and leave it at that, provided Travis did his job. Nothing worse than an employer who insisted on interfering with the job over some spur-of-the-moment impulse. "What does it matter – you guys don't have some kind of health code you need to follow all the way out on this island, do you?"

"I'd prefer to follow a health code where possible, but the concern is actually that the Enforcers share bathrooms." Oh, right – Travis had completely forgotten, since the other guy hadn't left so much as a toothbrush in the room. "Your neighbor, Mr. C'Baoth, was a little annoyed that you left a dead body in _pieces_ in the shower."

"C'Baoth… how do you pronounce that?"

"The way I just pronounced it," Ofdensen replied, narrowing his eyes in an understated gesture of exasperation. Travis noticed and quickly decided not to care.

"Is he the guy in the burlap robe? The mad wizard guy?" Travis had seen the older man in passing a few times, but never spoken to him.

"You probably shouldn't call him either of those things to his _face_, but yes. He is." Travis realized they had reached the control room, where Sakyo was calmly explaining something to a man whose suit and sunglasses didn't hide that he looked ready to shit his pants. "Feel free to run along now – there was a problem with the cameras on the east peninsula and I need to get that checked out."

"Alright. I was going to make sure my ride was in gear, then go scope out a few outposts before it gets really hot."

Ofdensen nodded in his taciturn way, and the door slid shut behind him.

---

The lights on the elevator flashed downwards, one by one. Instead of merely numbering the floors in the base, BORED had chosen to describe each floor's function next to the elevator light corresponding with it (why the elevators of all things were easy to navigate, Travis would never know). Of course, to get anywhere on the elevator, you needed to swipe your keycard, and most keycards would only grant access to certain floors. For example, the **Workout Room** was open to all employees, but the more posh **Gym and Spa** floor just above was only for Gold-clearance cards (which all the Enforcers had) and Platinum-clearance cards (which BORED had). Travis's Gold-clearance got him everywhere except for the VIP bedroom floor and the **Pinnacle**, the room where BORED kept their most secret plans and held their most secret meetings.

Not that Travis cared. He was being paid several shitloads of money, plus room and board (with most of the executive perks), just to watch a few dozen poor bastards massacre each other and kill any who step out of line. At worst, he'd lose maybe one or two nights' sleep over the guilt, and at best, it'd be fun and easy. He smiled as he reached the bottom floor; **Harbor and Parking.** BORED's unique base layout had them storing all the vehicles deep in the mostly-flooded underground caves, which they had expanded and turned into a regular underground harbor. A few ships docked deep down here, and land and air vehicles were kept in the caves until they needed to be used, when a freight elevator would bring them up to the surface.

As he got off the elevator, Travis began to make a beeline for the part of the expansive cavern he knew his Schpeltiger would be in, but he was quickly distracted. There was a wooden sailing vessel docked now, an impressive-looking battleship marked 'MARINE' on the sails. Lots of cannons, and quite a few men in white caps and coats moving along it (the marines or maybe the navy, he supposed). "Lousy jarhead butt pirates…" Travis muttered as he continued onwards. They were a ways away, and weren't bothering him as long as they didn't bother to stop the contest.

Another hundred feet away, though, he found something even more distracting. "Yah!" _Crack._ "Yah-AH!" _Crackcrack._ A woman with short black hair was practicing sword techniques the old-fashioned way: with a bamboo sword and a scarecrow made of tatami mats. He stopped to take a look at her sword technique, then stopped pretending and just looked at her. _Even with the glasses, even with that heavy, unflattering jacket she wears over the floral-print shirt and long, pastel pants, she looks good. She's skinny, with curves in all the right places, and I think there's a nice face behind those frames. Good thing, too; this place has been a fucking sausage-fest so far. I was worried I'd have to stalk a female contestant. Oh, shit, she knows I'm looking at her._

"Can I help you?" she asked, a bit annoyed but not really impolite. _ She knows exactly where my eyes were wandering. She must be a pretty sweet kid, not to be angrier with me. Now think of something to say._

"Your technique is outstanding, but you aren't putting enough emotion into those blows." _Hey, that actually makes sense – run with it._ "You should put some anger behind those strikes – what else is it good for, anyway?"

The girl considered the idea. "If I let my rage get the better of me, it could easily be exploited."

"Just because you're getting angry doesn't mean you lose control. Here, let me show you." She offered the handle of the training sword, and he gladly took it. Inhaling, he pulled the sword back over his head and focused on the tatami dummy. _It's that asshole who ruined your shower. It's that Smoker bastard who talked down to you. It's that BITCH WHO KILLED YOUR PARENTS!_ Suddenly there was a massive tearing sound as Travis swung the blade downward. The tatami mats fell to the ground, partially torn, but the sword had sustained most of the damage – it had broken above the handle. "Whoops."

"What was that?!" the young woman yelled, mostly annoyed but a little amused. "You broke the training set! Besides, you left yourself way open."

"Well, yeah. I'd only use an attack like that when another person with a melee weapon was charging me, or to finish off a stunned enemy." Travis lamely poked at the collapsed mats to illustrate. "Well… sorry." _Shit, that didn't work out as planned. So much for scoring with the Sexy Librarian Swordsman._ He flipped the broken bamboo sword around and returned the handle to the brunette. "Here."

"Thanks…" she took it uncertainly, most definitely _not_ brushing his hand. "So much for maintaining control."

"You're quite beautiful, you know." _Whoops, that just escaped. Luckily it wasn't one of the dirty ones._ Still, before he knew it she had slapped him. As he cried out in surprise and held his cheek, she blushed.

"I'm sorry! Reflex. Uh… listen, you're sweet, but… I'm not really on the market right now… that is to say…"

"Is he bothering you, Tashigi?" Travis stiffened at the unpleasantly familiar voice, his reddened cheek forgotten. The swordsman girl (obviously Tashigi)'s own cheeks blushed further, and he turned around. It was that asshole Smoker! "Touchdown. Fancy meeting you again so soon."

"You! What are you doing down here?" Travis turned away from Tashigi; _it's probably a lost cause anyway._

"I'm just here to get my ride… and keep an eye on my troops."

"Your _troops?!_ Who, the… aw, don't tell me you're in charge of these Navy goons!"

"Goons?!" Tashigi yelled angrily, and Travis winced. She could go from soft and unsure of her words to loud and angry pretty quickly.

"I see you were just getting acquainted with my second-in-command, Officer Tashigi. It's probably relevant information for you that she's a surprisingly fierce swordsman who's dedicated her life to retrieving fine swords from amoral bastards who don't deserve them."

_She's definitely a lost cause, then. Shame. _"I was just giving her some friendly advice on technique," Travis snapped. "I'll get out of your hair now."

"I'm going your way," Smoker said calmly, leaping off the crate he had been sitting cross-legged on to land a few steps behind Travis.

When they had left earshot of Tashigi, Travis grumbled, "Why are you tailing me?"

"You noticed." Smoker chuckled a little, and Travis cringed; it wasn't a healthy sound. "It's simple – I really don't trust you."

"I'm just doing my job. I wonder, when the chips fall down, which of us will prove loyal."

Smoker's eyes narrowed. "I don't think you understand – in some cases, loyalty doesn't make you trustworthy."

Finally, they reached the section of the cavern that was used as a garage. Travis marched right past the several standard ATVs and Jeeps; they would get people through the underbrush, sure, but they weren't impressive vehicles. "So I hear one of the Enforcers is getting paid in jewels, and another's trading his services for a spaceship. Some people, eh?" Then Travis reached a crate marked 'TOUCHDOWN', and he immediately set himself on prying it open (not bothering to use a crowbar).

"I ain't getting paid," Smoker grumbled. Then he launched into a story about why he was doing it; Travis didn't listen to all of it. He had found a crate of his own and was using his big-ass jitte-thing as a crowbar of sorts. It ended with, "And I have to share my bathroom with a spiky black rat wearing just gloves and shoes. I've seen some crazy shit in my life, but that's pretty weird. Luckily, he isn't around much."

Hearing the word 'bathroom' jogged Travis's memory of his morning's events, and he eagerly related them to Smoker, who gave him a few funny looks over it. But by the time he was finished, he managed to pull the lid of his crate bare-handed. "Jackpot!" He opened it, and was immediately plowed under by an avalanche of packing peanuts. But inside those peanuts was… "My Schpeltiger!" Travis exulted. Wading through the Styrofoam tide, he dragged the massive white motorcycle out and leaned on it, grinning at Smoker. "Impressive, isn't it?"

The commodore frowned a little more. "It looks like just a glorified scooter. Big, though, I'll give it that."

"Not just big – powerful." Travis rubbed his hand along the vehicle, taking in its luster, its smell. _Have to enjoy the paint job while it lasts._ "It's a super large scooter, with a platinum white body and red pinstripes and markings. It's got rear twin disk brakes, sweet suspension, a super long spin arm, fat rim 30 inch Grasshopper tires, and a super freaky engine that I can't even begin to explain. The four mufflers that extend from the left and right side power filters and muffler covers create a very hot X shape when looked at from the front or back, and they power the turbo." He finished dragging it clear and sat down on it, listening to the motor rev. "It's only 530 millimeters high, but 1,488 millimeters wide and a full 3946 millimeters long, and the top speed is _impossible to measure_ thanks to the turbo boost. I'll be plowing down any trees I don't care to go around."

"That seems unlikely, given how much smaller the front wheel is than the back."

"It's big enough. I used to try it out on the palm trees in town, just to see if it'd work."

Smoker sighed, pulling his own vehicle out. Unlike Travis, he was able to do it one-handed, but then again, his vehicle was a bit smaller. "Like you, it's about as subtle as a Buster Call." He finished producing a green three-wheeled ATV from his own crate.

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Travis grumbled, but Smoker ignored him, explaining his own custom vehicle and why it was better than Travis's. Travis didn't listen much until Smoker mentioned that it ran on his own unique power. "And what power would that be?"

"Raise your voice at me again and I just might show you." The commodore blew a surprisingly large amount of smoke out of his nose. "Oh… and watch out for the old man behind you."

"What old man?!" Travis turned around and found himself face to face with an elderly, white-bearded man, who stood uncomfortably close to him and affixed him with a piercing gaze. "YAH!" He stumbled back, but quickly regained his balance and composure. "Hey, I know you. You're Joruus C'Baoth, the guy I'm sharing my bathroom with. If this is about the dead body in the shower… sorry. It was self-defense."

The man, clad in silvery pants and a red-trimmed black shirt of an almost Eastern design, waved his hand dismissively. "It was an unpleasant shock, I admit, but you struck down that man with ease. He ambushed you in such an underhanded manner, but… you don't have a scratch on you, do you?" Joruus was intense in expression, and seemed determined to hover just inside Travis's personal space.

Smoker chuckled, hopping onto his vehicle. He revved it, and a cloud of smoke almost identical to the one produced by his cigars shot from the back. "I'm going out for a ride. You two have fun getting to know each other. Oh, and Touchdown… I've got my eye on you." He drove off, his machine giving a healthy roar but still not as loud as the one the Schpeltiger produced.

"Bah. Don't listen to that clod." Joruus's eyes flickered to the Tsubaki, the beam katana Travis wore on his hip, and Travis noticed that Joruus was armed with one of his own. _An unfamiliar model, but it's gotta be one of the high-end ones with no support bar._ "Those who are not force-sensitive can be so… ignorant sometimes."

"What are you getting at, old man?"

"You're strong, arrogant, well-versed in the ways of the sword, and the Force is _palpable_ around you…" Joruus was circling Travis now, which was really, really unnerving. Suddenly, the old man stumbled back as if struck, his tone switching abruptly to a mix of fear, anger, and shock. "You aren't a Sith Lord, are you?!"

"Never heard of 'em." _What a lunatic. Smoker must be laughing his ass off that he left me to talk to the crazy ancient._ "I'm just a humble assassin."

Joruus's demeanor shifted again, so abruptly switching to pleasant surprise that Travis thought he could hear gears being stripped. "Is that so? You have an abundance of talent. Tell me… you have strange powers, don't you? Abilities that you can't find an explanation for in any biology text…."

"What of it? I've transcended my limits – any human can do it, if they've got the drive."

"Oh, you think so?" Joruus started to chuckle, but he quickly abandoned that for outright insane laughter. "Join me, Travis. Become my apprentice, my _padawan,_ and I can sharpen your abilities to levels you do not yet believe possible. And when this foolish exercise in mayhem is over, we can travel through space to begin setting up a rightful kingdom, one where Jedi rule, a-"

"You lost me at space travel," Travis interrupted. "Listen, it's been nice chatting, but I'm going to go scope out a spot to set up camp."

"I urge you to consider my offer," Joruus… well, he urged. Then his tone shifted, becoming innocent, almost pleading. "I will have a spaceship, you know. BORED is going to secure one for me in exchange for my services."

"Sorry, but I've already learned well from Master Jacobs and Thunder Ryu. They taught me everything I need to know." Travis sat back down on the seat of his Schpeltiger. "Thanks for the offer, though."

Joruus frowned. "I've never seen an X-Wing designed for land travel, before. Where did you get that?"

"The internet," Travis snapped, driving off. "And it's not an X-Wing!"

The mercurial old man's expression darkened as he watched the young assassin rush off. "I'll yet see you as my apprentice, young Touchdown. We, gifted in the ways of the force, must stick together."

**End of Chapter**

**No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle is the working title of the sequel to No More Heroes**_**,**_** the game Travis is from… hence the name. The song Travis is singing is "What's Up People?", the second-season opening theme from **_**Death Note**_**, and it's actually pretty damn near impossible to sing clearly at the speed it's meant to be sung at. The scene itself is also a reference to the fake ending of **_**No More Heroes**_** – in the fake ending, he's killed while on the toilet by a Mace Windu wannabe (in the real ending, the killer is stopped before he can do it). I figured after that, he'd keep a weapon within reach of the toilet at all times.**

**If you want to know more about the scenes involving Smoker, read his entry when it's ready – it contains the same scenes from his POV. Just a little something I'm experimenting with – you don't miss anything really vital because of it.**

**Crazy Joruus is mostly being crazy, but also unintentionally pointing out all the **_**Star Wars **_**references in Travis's character.**


	2. Battle One

**Well, here it is. Again, a little sloppy (particularly the POV), snuck in just outside the deadline. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters mentioned. I only own the contents of this story.  
**

**A Winner Is Two: Desperate Struggle**

**First Battle**

**Morally Ambiguous**

Travis yawned and flopped over on the ratty old sofa, trying to find a prone position that didn't cause something that felt like a potato to dig into his back. Finally he gave up and reached behind him, trying to find the source of his discomfort. Huh. The remote, _and _an unpeeled potato. How'd that get back there_?_ Shrugging, he paused the porno. He'd seen it enough times at this point that it wasn't doing anything for him. He would've liked to see something else, but the outpost only got basic cable, and he had only brought two pornos and two wrestling tapes himself. There was nothing.

Getting up, Travis brought the potato over to the microwave and left it on top. He'd bomb the potato for lunch later. He brushed past the microwave (he was thirsty now, but not hungry), opened the mini-bar, and grabbed a soda. It was too early for another beer. He popped open the can, chugged half on his way back to the couch, and plopped down with a grunt. Maybe something new was on TV.

There was a knock on the door. Travis jumped about a foot. He could've sworn he just checked the cameras five… well… in truth, Travis had been checking the cameras every five minutes for the first couple of days in his outpost, but lack of activity had caused his habits to slip. Five minutes became ten minutes, which lapsed to twenty minutes, which slipped to twice an hour; in truth, it had now been nearly an hour and a half since Travis checked the cameras. Feeling a little sour at himself, Travis grabbed the Tsubaki off the table near the door and cautiously opened it up.

"Greetings!" Travis was immediately aware of a high white collar, pair of obscuring goggles, and a shock of black hair. They were invading his personal space, and he would've extended the blade of his weapon right there if there had been any malevolence at all to them. "I am the great Professor Membrane! Doubtless you've heard of me through the stories of the _amazing research_ I've done… or perhaps you have seen my children's educational show, Probing the Membrane of Science!"

Come to think of it, Travis did know this guy from TV. He took a closer look. The man wore a white, short-sleeved lab coat that obscured his body from his knees to his nose, black rubber boots and gloves, his goggles, and some assorted wires and gadgetry. He had only that one piece of hair, but it was pretty impressive. Less impressive was the sunburn and the bruises that covered his pale skin, and the mud his coat was caked with. And the fact that he apparently wasn't wearing long pants under the (slightly tattered) lab coat, because his legs were bare. After this further assessment, Membrane gave the overall impression of a lunatic running the asylum, but Travis wasn't too worried. "Actually, yeah, I saw that was on last night-"

"Great! Then you do know who I am! Some poor misinformed fools have abducted me for a survival fighting tournament-"

"You don't say."

"And though I am a **genius** at all things, I do not specialize in close combat! I attempted to build a shelter, but a mutant with a strange power and a chef's uniform beat me insensate and ran me out, and I was caught in the storms!"

"Well, that's a shame." Travis was being scathingly sarcastic now, but Membrane didn't seem overly concerned with listening.

"Luckily, the various medical marvels I have performed on myself prevented me from contracting any serious diseases in the inclement weather, but it's far more fortunate that I've found your domicile!"

"I wouldn't use the word _fortunate_-"

"You seem like an understanding young man, and you clearly have access to _powerful modern technology_-" Travis got the feeling that behind his gleaming goggles, Membrane had been appraising the beam katana hilt in Travis's hand. "-and I absolutely _must_ get my hands on some communications equipment and find a way out of here so that I can CONTINUE SEARCHING FOR THE CURE FOR INSANITY!"

"I bet _you_ could really use that cure," Travis replied brightly.

"YES! My son, my poor son suffers from a case of insanity as sizeable as his gargantuan HEAD and I am glad you have agreed to let me commandeer this household (it's just for the moment, mind you), and **now we can**…" Travis didn't care to hear any more at this point, so he slammed the door in Membrane's face.

After maybe a second, a flurry of pounding assaulted the door. Travis ignored it and went to finish his soda. It let up after a minute, and after some silence, the knocking returned. This time, though, it was more polite and quiet, and Travis was compelled to answer it. _Now that he's calmed down, maybe that nut will listen to me explain why I can't let him in._

Travis opened the door. Nobody was there. He stepped out into the humid, strange flower-scented air and looked around. His outpost was a second floor over a makeshift garage, with a steep set of concrete stairs leading to the ground below. The building itself was a concrete block on metal stilts, and the garage was the space inside the stilts, protected on three sides by sheet metal. The small wooden balcony at the upper landing provided a good view into the forest which surrounded him. It was beautiful, if you liked that sort of thing. Travis hated it, but not so much that it distracted him from the mystery of Membrane's whereabouts.

"For SCIENCE!" Membrane dropped down behind Travis, and before the surprised assassin could turn, he felt a pair of gloved hands slam into his shoulder blades. The shove sent Travis careening forward nose-first into the stairs, leading to a rather painful tumble into a puddle that was deeper than it looked. And more full of tadpoles. Tadpoles and a single thick root that he struck temple-first. "Your donation is appreciated!" the man boomed, and Travis was vaguely aware of the door closing from his position facedown in four inches of swampy water.

After a moment, he extricated his face with a wet sucking noise and put a hand gingerly to his forehead. It came back with no blood, so he wiped his face off, tried to dry his wet sunglasses on the wet front of his shirt, and failed. He managed to pull around the dry back of his shirt to dry off the shades and replaced them. A sort of dull boiling feeling began to bubble up from the pit of Travis's stomach, and he realized he was about to get really angry. He supposed that was a good thing, as he had good reason and he hadn't felt much of anything in quite a while now. Wait for it… wait for it…

"THAT MOTHERFUCKER! I'm going to tear his fucking goggles off his bitch-ass face and strangle him with them! And then I'll fucking tear his eyes out and cram them up his asshole! I'll cut his fucking heart out with a spoon, and bite off every one of his fingers, and I'll strap him into a fucking brazen bull, and throw it off a fucking cliff! And I'll… I'll… I'll murder his wife, and poison his pets, and piss on the graves of his ancestors! He will BEG me for decapitation, and I'll gladly grant it!" There it was; that felt good. "EAT SHIT, MEMBRANE!" Travis drew his beam katana and activated it, preparing to cleave the door down.

Instantly, he felt himself on the wrong side of an unpleasant number of volts. The Tsubaki Mk-I, like all beam katanas, was never intended to be activated in wet conditions. In fact, the instruction booklet explicitly compares activating a wet Tsubaki to tasering oneself in the hand. Teeth chattering, whole body shaking, Travis finally managed to unclench his fist and drop the weapon. It clattered to the ground and sparked for a moment before shutting down from rapid battery expenditure. "Effff…" Travis hissed, chewing his lower lip. That was painful and stupid, and worse, he was disarmed now. Well, what options did that live? He could try and force the door barehanded – no, the outpost was too well-reinforced for that. He could head back to the main headquarters…

One of Ofdensen's many warnings came back to him. _"If you lose a gold keycard, we'll replace it, but you'll get nothing after the tournament."_ His card was up in there with Membrane. Yikes. That wasn't an option; he couldn't afford the ticket home if he worked pro-bono!

That left only one option – get creative with breaking the door down. Travis's eyes scanned the area for an improvised weapon, and he saw his Schpeltiger, sitting in the 'garage' beneath the outpost. He hadn't bothered to lock it up, since he had the only key to the cycle's lock in his pocket. Travis smiled wickedly. Normally, no motorcycle would be able to climb those stairs, but the Schpeltiger's rather unusual turbo system allowed it to make impressive jumps. He unlocked the bike, jumped on it, and gunned the engine, roaring out into the trees. He put as much distance as he could from his outpost without those damned invincible trees becoming a problem. Then he drifted his cycle through a sharp 180 and lined himself up with the door. "Your wake-up call is ready, Professor," Travis snarled.

---

The man in the blue uniform and glasses smiled gently. What had he introduced himself as? Jade? "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not authorized to patch you through to your assistants. It could jeopardize our whole operation. I strongly suggest you leave, as Mr. Touchdown probably plans to do unspeakable things to you. In fact, I have him on camera feed right now-"

"Bah! If you won't help me, I'll help _myself!_" Membrane ignored him and began rapidly typing, bringing up an interface that fought to squeeze Jade's smile off of the monitor for room. "I'll just hack the system. This shouldn't take too long…"

"I have warned you of the danger you are in," Jade pressed. A faint buzzing roar began to register in Membrane's ears, but he pushed it out of his mind and kept working. Hmm… it seemed as if all communication off the island needed to be run through Jade's location, so it would be tricky. Perhaps it would be easier to build a powerful portable satellite transmitter from materials in the room… there was a microwave oven, a plasma television and a mini-bar. He opened up the mini-bar and grabbed a bottle of spring water that had been shoved near the back. Super geniuses couldn't work thirsty, of course, and this water was delicious compared to the stagnant rainwater he had been drinking! He finished it off and released a satisfied sigh, stopping to look at the sparkling bottle briefly as fluorescent light filtered through it. Boy, that noise was getting rather loud now. "It's been nice speaking to you," Jade said, his smile never slipping for an instant, and he cut the connection.

The next instant, a tremendous white motorcycle crashed underbelly-first through both the door and the concrete portion of wall above it. Although the wall was sturdy, it was simply no match for over a ton of metal travelling, through the air at outrageous speeds, presenting a surprisingly narrow profile for its weight. The impact of bursting through the first wall jarred the building back on its stilts, knocking Membrane over, and that saved him from being crushed by the rogue motorcycle, whose back wheel had now made contact with the floor. The bulky chopper continued forward, its two wheels grinding against the floor and ceiling alike, but was finally stopped by the far wall, which it embedded itself into. This secondary crash further shook the building off-balance, the floor now tilted at a five degree angle.

Membrane pulled himself to his feet, shaking the rubble off himself. His hair and coat were covered in cement dust, but otherwise he was just startled. This young man, Touchdown, had just done that? Yes, of course he had, he was still clutching the handlebars and straddling the vehicle's chassis for dear life. It was a brilliantly unexpected tactical move, but extremely reckless, and it had cost him the element of surprise. Still, though, that motorcycle was fascinatingly designed. He wished he had seen it before.

Touchdown pulled himself numbly off the Schpeltiger and dropped to the floor, then sidestepped in time to avoid the recliner sliding toward his side of the room. The other furniture, at least, seemed better-secured. "How do you like that, fuckface?" he gloated. "That's what you get when you cross-" Membrane raised his glove and shot a powerful beam at Touchdown. He had last set the device to a rather high heat-based setting in order to cook a fish, so when it struck Travis, he gasped and went down on his side, clutching desperately at a huge, ugly new burn on his stomach.

Membrane regarded his foe coldly. "I'm sorry you made me do that, but your stunt has just set me back HOURS! Possibly even longer! It is imperative that I establish contact with the outside world! My research cannot wait…" he turned away, and began to sift through the rubble, "…so your medical treatment will have to. Perhaps, if you are lucky and above all QUIET, I will finish in time to perform a lifesaving skin graft." Hmm, perhaps if he used the motorcycle's battery along with the microwave, he could assemble a device to hook into the main power grid and send out a counter-charge EMP. With luck, that would disable the shields – not long enough for him to assemble a boat and pass their limits, but long enough to use a blackberry or something – ah! It seemed Mr. Touchdown had left his cell phone on the recliner…

---

Oh, god, that hurt.

Travis coughed, then nearly screamed. Coughing made the pain worse.

Okay, no more coughing. Actually, scratch that. No more whining. Had he forgotten who he was? He was the number one ranked U.S. assassin, for fuck's sake! He hadn't torn a bloody path through his heroes to have it all end at the hands of some random celebrity scientist!

He was feeling pretty shitty, though. He'd have to catch the scientist off-guard and end it quickly. One hand crept to the Tsubaki on his waist, but his heart sank when he felt it – still wet. The sword had gotten soaked through, and it'd probably just keep shocking him until he cracked it open and let it bake dry in the sun. He'd have to find one of his other blades.

A loose piece of ceiling dropped onto the edge of a table and bounced off, drawing Travis's attention there. No, that wasn't where he had left them… it was the table opposite it! With a herculean, teeth-gritting effort, the assassin forced himself slowly to his feet. He had to be careful not to make a sound, or he'd alert Membrane.

Without looking up from dismantling the plasma TV, Membrane spoke to him. "I am a doctor, and it is my professional opinion that you should not attempt to move. You'll only **exacerbate **your condition." Travis froze. "Like my INSANE SON exacerbates _his _condition by THINKING! Normally I _encourage_ thinking, because it's **good**, but that Dib, he…" Travis finished the battle of getting to his feet and managed to stumble forward and grab the first sword he could reach: the Tsubaki Mk-III. A beautiful piece of art, the straight, white handle ended in a golden guard shaped like the kanji for 'tiger'. It was more powerful than the Mk-I, damn stylish, didn't need a receiver piece at the end of the blade (making it ideal for stabbing), and since the latest motherboard upgrades, _never had to be recharged._ It would do just fine.

Membrane looked up from the TV, although he didn't turn. "I wasn't making a suggestion." He turned and threw himself at Travis, but with a good beam sword in his hands, suddenly the pain didn't seem quite so severe to Travis. He extended the sword's blade – unlike the others, the lack of receiver bar caused this one to extend like a traditional light saber – and slashed out. Membrane was able to quickly backpedal, but he received a shallow cut along his left arm and side for the effort. He hissed, a strange, almost inhuman sound, and dodged Travis's follow-up.

The scientist drove an elbow into Travis's wound, and he couldn't hold the scream back this time. Biting his lip, Travis grabbed Membrane by the arm, and Membrane's other arm lashed out to hold off Travis's sword. "_Fuck you!_" Undaunted, Travis spun in a circle until Membrane's grip loosened, then threw him back, toward the collapsed doorway. The scientist stumbled back, but managed to regain his balance atop the fallen door itself; Travis had been about to dash forward to finish the job, but the pain slowed his reaction time just long enough that his opening disappeared. Now Membrane had his palm out with that energy-shooting glove at the ready, although he seemed to be modifying its settings with his free hand.

"You really are fantastically persistent." Membrane's glasses flashed in the sunlight streaming through the broken ceiling, and the back-lighting threw the rest of his body into shadow, giving him an inhuman appearance. "First a man who uses 'magic', then a man with a _preposterous _pain threshold! Maybe it's something in the environment; many of the animals seem affected as well. No, I don't think I will perform a skin graft. An autopsy will reveal FAR MORE to me." Travis wasn't listening. His eyes were locked on the professor's wounds, his ears focused on the sound of the first drops of blood hitting the floor. Somewhere deep in Travis, the chaos of his soul began to weave itself into a new, horrible order.

Clutching his stomach with one hand, Travis held the Mk-III out for defense with the other, and crept toward Membrane. However, rather than let him get close, Membrane finished adjusting the glove and let loose another blast. Travis blocked with his blade, but this time there was less thermal energy behind it. Unfortunately, there was concussive force instead.

Travis was thrown backward against his Schpeltiger as if he had been launched out of a catapult. This last impact was finally too great a burden for the stilts of the abode to bear, and with a groan they began to buckle in. Both fighters noticed this, and the battle came to a brief stop as the whole structure collapsed backwards. The agony Travis was trying to ignore in his stomach was joined by a horrible rising feeling as the entire room crashed to the ground, slamming into the mud with horrible force. The initial impact wasn't actually very loud, but to add injury to injury, the damaged, toppled structure finished collapsing in on itself, and that caused a far louder series of crashes.

Gasping, Travis shifted the remains of his recliner off of himself and sat up. The heavy, cushioned chair had crushed down on him this time, but it had, in turn, protected him from a jagged section of pipe that was now impaled into the left armrest. He really was badly injured now – he had been slammed against a less-than-comfortable section of the Schpeltiger, and he was fairly certain it had broken some of his ribs in back. He hadn't been in this much pain since Jeane tried to literally tear his heart out. Maybe Membrane had gotten it worse.

No such luck. The scientist not only was alright, he actually rolled back into a near-handstand and LEAPT to his feet. Granted, he was now covered in small cuts, and even more cement dust, and his spike of hair had separated into several locks, some of which hung down into his face, but… okay, he looked like shit, but he wasn't seriously injured. "What a terrible accident!" He looked around. "All the electronics have been DESTROYED! I'll need to seek another place of shelter! And I could've injured my head!" He held up one finger in triumph. "Luckily, SCIENCE never falters! This young man's vehicle seems intact, and his weapons, advanced as they are, will surely be useful to me! Why, with the kind of _power_ his motorcycle had, I could possibly-"

"I'm sorry, Do you ever shut up?" Travis tried to stand up, but there was little strength in his legs, and he sank to one knee. "I'm so sick of your babbling." He belched, and it came out as a bubble of blood. That wasn't good. This time Travis made it to his feet, but a new problem cropped up when he started seeing double. "Fuck…"

Membrane the dust off his head and looked at Travis. "It's usually best to leave a test subject alive, but in your case, it may be in my personal best interests to make an exception." He drew an alarmingly large syringe from a pocket of his lab coat. "This _fungal extract_ (obtained with great difficulty from a FASCINATING new mushroom species I found in a waterlogged cave) has, so far, caused EXTREME CYTOTOXIC EFFECTS in **all** animal tissues I exposed it to, **ERGO!**…"

Travis couldn't concentrate on Membrane. He was in too much pain for the civility of listening, especially to a scientific lecture. Instead he found himself preoccupied with the glistening blood on Membrane's coat, the smell and taste of his own blood bubbling up from his throat. Deep inside his spirit, a tiger stirred. Normally, that tiger lay dormant unless Travis was wading knee-deep through lesser soldiers, awakening for rare moments to truly make him a one-man army. The protracted, difficult conflict with the relatively weak Membrane was giving him similar feelings.

The tiger roared. "I'm so sick of you!" Travis snarled, looking up at Membrane. "Blueberry Cheese Brownie!"

---

Joruus frowned and pounded on the arcane machine. No matter how hard he tried, it would not comply with his demands! They were actually quite simple… "I said I wanted Coruscant blush wine!" he shouted at the machine. "This is distinctly not Coruscant blush wine!"

"Share and enjoy!" The machine chirped, pouring more of the vile brown ichors into his glass.

Joruus whirled on Solidus, the only other current occupant of the room, in a fury. "This machine's AI is damaged!"

"We don't have any Coruscant blush wine, Mr. C'Baoth," Solidus replied. He didn't look up from the manila folder he was thumbing through. "In fact, that beverage fountain – cutting-edge as it is – does not serve any alcoholic beverages. I've yet to encounter such a machine that does."

"What filth is it giving me, then?"

"That's a diet cola. It always serves that when it doesn't understand the order." Solidus's bearded lips twitched into a smile. "Try it – most civilized people on the planet enjoy the drink."

Joruus was no longer listening. He had gasped, as if in shock, and turned to the side. "Did you feel that?"

Solidus looked up very seriously. "Feel what?"

"That was a tremendous spike in the Force!" Joruus's eyes bored into the wall. "It's a few kilometers distant, but make no mistake – somebody has just tapped into arcane energies!" He turned away and began to stroke his own beard. "It feels like the Dark Side…"

"It sounds like an area of your expertise," the ex-president remarked. "I trust you will look into it?"

"With all haste. If I begin meditating immediately, I may learn a great deal that interests me."

---

Travis had managed to stand again, although he was sagging like a marionette with half its strings cut. His beam katana, however, was triumphantly poised in the air. The beam, glowing brighter and brighter, began to overflow with energy, sparks dancing in an increasingly wide area around Travis. "DIE!" Travis swung his blade forward, and a blinding white ball of lightning came loose from the blade, hissing towards Membrane. It wasn't incredibly fast, but the attack was too unusual to predict, and the quarters were too close to dodge.

Membrane gained enough of his wits to throw his arms up defensively, but the effects were still quite profound. The lightning slammed into his right forearm, and he screamed as it scorched his skin. Various components of the blaster hidden in his glove burst as they overloaded with energy, and his arm sagged to his side, useless. Membrane shuddered in pain, but mustered up some bravado. "Is that… is that all you're capable of? It'll take more than that to break the tide of PROGRESS!"

"Well, luckily, I'm just getting started!" Travis cackled. He slashed again, sloppily over-committing to the movement so that he almost lost his balance, and another ball of electric death surged forth.

"Hah! It's a good thing I'm still mobile!" Membrane leapt almost playfully out of the way of the attack, avoiding the lightning entirely – but then his gloating was cut short. He leapt too far and slammed into a broken section of wall, and a jagged piece of rebar stabbed into the side of his abdomen. The scientist tried to set his jaw and bear it, but it was too much, and a rather pathetic shriek rent the air.

Travis laughed a sick, wounded laugh. Blood flowed freely from his nose and mouth, but he was smiling like a child with a roll of bubble wrap. Sparks briefly framed his head like an ironic halo. "It hurts, doesn't it? What's wrong, _professor?_ Aren't you willing to give some of your own blood for your precious progress?" He let another ball of lighting fly, aiming straight for Membrane's head.

"Blast it all!" Membrane, with one last moan, managed to push himself off the piece of rebar, but the ball still grazed him along his head and right shoulder, burning off the strap of his goggles and setting his lab coat on fire. "CURSES!" He tore the smoldering coat off, careful to avoid stabbing himself with the needle he still clutched. Underneath the coat, he wore only a ratty, sweat-stained undershirt and a pair of boxers.

Travis was still laughing, and the storm around him seemed to concentrate inward, his blade glowing ever brighter. "How does it feel to be brought down to the level of everybody else? At the end of the day, when you can't hide anymore, you're just a nearsighted guy with bad teeth!"

At last, Membrane's manners were broken. "I'll kill you!" he screamed, his voice cracking. Membrane charged forward, syringe at the ready. He only took three steps before Travis swung again, and this time, a concentrated electric beam erupted from his side. This new blast was much faster, and only Travis's slightly crooked aim spared the Professor instant death. As it was, Membrane sank to his knees, his entire arm vaporized. He looked half-catatonic.

"Well, how do you like that?" Travis snickered. "You've got nothing left to fight with!" He attempted to take a step forward, only for his legs to give out on him. "Damn… I'm so spent… oh well. I guess I can finish you from over here."

"I just…I just wanted to help the human race," Membrane whispered.

"Did you? Or is that just what you told yourself to help you sleep at night?" Travis sobered up. "You were in it for the glory and the celebrity. You were in it because you liked feeling smarter than anybody else. You were in it for the thrill of infinite funding, infinite support, a steady supply of yes-men. Helping the human race, BULLSHIT. You don't care about humanity, because you can't crack its chest open and see what it is!"

"What do YOU know about humanity?" There was still some anger left.

"I know enough to know I don't have hardly any of it anymore. You? You still pretend. You've got kids, right? When was the last time before the tournament you hugged them?"

He swallowed. "It _has_ been a while."

"That's what I thought." Travis could feel the rush of power beginning to wane, but he grinned again anyway. "You should have paid them more attention. You never know when you're going to leave them orphans." He swung his blade one last time, falling over with the force of his swing. The beam drilled into Membrane's chest and left a gaping hole.

Travis started laughing again, his mind filled with elation and release. And pain; he was in a ridiculous amount of pain. He slid a hand into his pocked, and pulled out his cell phone. Lacking the energy to bring it to his ear, he dialed the number from memory and set it to speaker.

"Travis?" It was Jade. "I saw the whole thing on camera. Don't worry, we've got a medical team on their way for you. You're going to have to-"

"Jade?"

"Yes?"

Tavis grinned weakly. "Tell the bosses I got the keycard back. I'll need to switch bases, though."

**End of First Battle**

**I don't know if Joruus is an alcohol person, but I know Coruscant blush wine is a real part of the SW universe. I went and found one on the Wookieepedia.**

**As for Travis's Dark Side powers, I'm going to basically go with what the setting calls for to explain them. Chaser would see them as haki, Kakashi would see them as jutsu, and Joruus sees them as a spike in force energy. They're totally inexplicable in-setting. They also normally require you to kill somebody first; I plan to have them consistently trigger off of blood in this tournament.**

**By Travis's standards, he bruises like a banana here. Couldn't be helped.  
**


	3. Intermission One

**Just throwing this up there with a threadbare proofread so I'll have more time to work on the main fight.**

**Disclaimer: Travis and Smoker don't belong to blah blah blah blah blah.**

**A Winner Is Two: Desperate Struggle**

**Relocation**

Travis's eyes shot open. This wasn't where he had fallen asleep. He jerked into a sitting position and lashed out wildly with his arm, but only managed to tear the IV out of his arm. "Bloody fucking Mary!" he yelled. Clutching his left wrist with his other hand, he blinked and looked around. He was in a room that was obviously a sick bay of some sort – white beds on wheels, curtains, and medical machinery everywhere – but also obviously part of the BORED infamous volcano lair, judging by the stainless steel make of the walls. He wasn't alone – a couple of the other beds were occupied by some of Ofdensen's men. A doctor, dressed in the traditional white lab coat but also in a Klokateer's executioner hood (a jarringly effective combination), was treating another patient on the next cot. Travis realized with a groan that it was Smoker, sitting on the side of his bed as the doctor pulled bandages off of his shoulder.

"I haven't been injured in the line of duty in years," he growled. "I forgot how much the wound-cleaner stuff hurts. Touchdown's awake."

The doctor's head snapped up. "So he is. Alright, Commodore. The wound seems to have healed cleanly. I still don't think it's wise to go out in the field while you have staples holding your shoulder together, and I don't recommend making a habit of it."

"Glad to see I'm not the only one who got jobbed during a fight," Travis said coolly.

"He caught me off-guard, that's all." Smoker snorted. "It won't happen again." He clacked his teeth clacked nervously, and Travis realized he was seeing the guy without a cigar for the first time. "I'm gonna go out in the hall and light up."

"You can't smoke out there either," the doctor said disapprovingly.

"Look, pal, I'll follow your rules in here, but that's it." The Marine stomped out.

"Well, now, Mr. Touchdown. You gave me quite a scare when the Commodore brought you in. Punctured lung, broken ribs, shallow but severe burns on your chest; I wouldn't have guessed you had won if they hadn't told me. I thought we'd have to do skin grafts, but you surprised us. It's amazing how well you take to… pretty much anything. There were some strange existing wounds, though… I've never seen anybody with a plate holding their sternum together like that."

"Yeah, well, assassin is an interesting job. How long was I out for?"

"Five days, but that's frankly surprising. Your personal effects are right here; we wanted to incinerate these clothes, but Mr. Ofdensen has your power of attorney when you're in this sick bay, and he figured you'd want to try and salvage them. You won't be wearing them anytime soon, though; I can tell you this shirt is pretty far gone, and there's concrete and mud ground into the pants and jacket."

Travis took the two large sealable plastic bags he had been handed, thanking the doctor dully. Something seemed off with this, but he quickly realized what it was. "You said Smoker brought me back?"

"Yeah. The Commodore was on his way back from his own fight when Mr. Curtiss detoured him over to you. He brought you in slung over his shoulder, but he was pretty gentle, considering his demeanor. He even brought your vehicle back to the garage."

"What?!" Travis hopped out of bed, grabbed the bags, and ran out the sick bay's doors (which were automatic and doubled, to accommodate the wheeled beds). The doctor called something about bed rest after Travis, but he didn't really give a damn. Smoker was living up to his name just outside, leaning against the wall and staring at his truncheon like it was the most interesting goddamn thing in the world. "Why did you save my ass?" Travis demanded, painfully aware now that he was wearing a hospital gown that bared said ass for all to see.

Smoker glared down at him. "It's not because I like you. It's because I'm a military leader, and any half-decent military leader is taught not to let his comrades die when it can be avoided." He rummaged around in his jacket pocket. "Here," he grunted, tossing a key to Travis. "I got your giant-ass bike back into the garage. It's fine, except for some mud and scratches. You were right; it is a good ride."

"What's up with you?" Travis asked, slipping the key into one of his bags-o-stuff. "Normally you're more eager to piss me off than compliment my ride."

"What's it to you, asshole?"

"That's better," Travis said with a toothy and alarming grin. "Seriously, I owe you one for this."

"You don't owe me anything." Smoker turned to leave.

"No, really. I wouldn't put myself in the debt of some jack-off like you lightly. You pulled my ass out of the garbage back there, and then you treated my ride like it was your own."

Smoker sighed, a cloud of smoke thick enough to set off a fire alarm billowing out from his lips. "Honestly, I was glad to have work to do that didn't involve killing."

"What's wrong with killing?" Travis asked standoffishly. Even if he owed the guy, he wouldn't let his profession be insulted.

Smoker raised a grey-green eyebrow. "The fact that you can even ask that question with a straight face means you're screwed up worse than I thought. It's _killing._ You're taking another person's life, obliterating them from this plane of existence. It should be self-evident."

Travis smiled knowingly. "You've just gotta stop thinking of other people as… people. It's easy once you start thinking of how you're better than them. I thought you'd know how to do this shit. You are a soldier, aren't you? You kill for a living!" He was just staring. "What?"

"That doesn't mean I can just turn SOCIOPATHY on and off, dammit! And for the record, I don't _kill _for a living. I _win._"

Travis shrugged and turned around. "Who said anything about turning it off?" He made for the elevator, then decided to turn around again and walk backwards to deal with the hospital gown thing. "I'll return that favor, just you wait."

---

The doc was right – his T-shirt (dammit, a collectable!) was ruined. His jacket, underwear and pants could be saved, and his shoes just needed a rinse under a garden hose. His glasses were fucking GONE, though. Ah well. He had brought a few spare outfits. Travis threw his old clothes, minus the shoes, in his room's laundry chute, and changed into his tan scale-print Crocodile T-shirt, his matching brown Rock Snake jacket and Rock Python jeans, and his bronze Scale belt. Lacking any sunglasses that truly fit the color scheme, he threw on some orange-lensed ones and his lucky Santa Destroy wristband.

He found his glove and weapons in the other bag, along with his keycard, cell phone, wallet, and MP3 player with earbuds (the sum total of his pocket contents). The cell phone was cracked but serviceable, aside from the fact that it currently only got service to other numbers within the shield. His MP3 player was broken, but it was an old model anyway. Most upsetting was that his Tsubaki. Mk I was gone, leaving only the Mk II and III. It was by no means his best beam sword (the second was much more powerful, and the third was nearly as powerful as that and faster), but it was still a regrettable loss.

Feeling ravenous, he stopped at the VIP mess hall for breakfast – except he discovered it was supper time on arrival. He shrugged it off and enjoyed the food, and noticed Sakyo, the BORED exec who had originally hired him, entering just as he finished. Two of his goons, a pair of mean-looking dudes wearing a yellow sun-themed suit and a grey-blue moon-themed suit, flanked him. "Hey, boss," Travis called, slinking over. "I kinda wrecked my outpost during my fight. What should I do?"

The two goons directed their killing intent Travis's way, and he was surprised by how strong it was. He made a quick mental note that Sakyo went the extra mile and hired premium henchmen and filed it away as Sakyo calmed them with a subtly raised hand. "Feel free to take some time off here at headquarters while you heal. Shadow's been sulking around ever since Robotnik and Ginger showed him up, and I could send him out instead for a while. You did fine work, Touchdown. Membrane was potentially very dangerous if he hacked our mainframe, and he had no intention of following our rules."

Travis shook his head in what was, by his standards, a polite refusal. "Thanks, but I feel fine. I'd rather get back out there."

"Really? Well, who am I to stop you? Feel free to pick a new outpost. Which one did you wreck?"

"The middle one to the south. You know, north of the big lake."

"Oh, yes. Well, why not the one north of that? It's close to the base, which is good. The contestants have been moving farther inland as a whole."

"Nah, I saw that one. There's no cover near it, which is good for a sniper camp, but I'm a swordsman. I'll figure something out."

---

He stepped into the elevator, swiped his keycard, and hit the button for the garage. It wasn't that he didn't like the base itself, it was the company; he didn't mind BORED's three reps, but the Klokateers and CIA goons were all _polite_ to him in the halls. It was WEIRD. Back in Santa Destroy, anybody Travis passed on the street would gladly urinate on his shoes, just to show how they felt about their neighbors. These guys and their insincere deference was just wrong. And then, there were all the creepers hired to be Travis's allies…

The elevator jerked to a halt and the doors opened, allowing Joruus to stride in with a sort of jerking glide. _Speak of the fucker. He's probably going to say something polite to me, too. He'll say "Good evening" at me – not to me, but at me, like he's the Grim Motherfucking Reaper. Just "Good evening." Okay. Here it comes._

"I felt the energies from your battle all the way from here," he intoned.

_Alright, not exactly wishing me a good evening, but I still hate the fucker._ "What's your point?"

"You're letting yourself go to waste," Joruus snapped. "All that raw power, and you're not training yourself in the ways of the Force at all. Worse, you're letting yourself be drawn to the Dark Side. Don't you realize you're better than these people?"

"Actually, yes. I was trying to explain that to Smoker earlier. I _am _better than-" Travis waved an arm around expansively, but the elevator wall cut his gesture short "…_these people._ But what does that have to do with any of your cult shit?"

The old man's eyes blazed, and Travis found himself lifted and pinned to the wall without Joruus so much as lifting a finger. "It's not cult shit! It is merely far beyond the comprehension of most of this planet's residents!"

Travis stared. "Did you corner me here in the elevator on purpose?"

"Of course I did! Because I'd hate to see your natural Force sensitivity wasted! Do you know how rare it is to tap into its energies without so much as an hour of training? You already have such power…" the elevator dinged, slightly disrupting Joruus's focus; Travis found he was able to mentally will himself out of the man's grasp.

"Make your point," Travis muttered. He really wanted to brush this guy off, but for once he didn't really feel like fighting. _It's not because I'm worried about losing, am I? That'd be pathetic, but I've never had a problem fighting loonies before. Maybe I'm just getting a bad feeling about the consequences if I start shit with other Enforcers. Then again, I'm pretty sure I could make a case for self-defense at this point…_

Joruus had composed himself enough to interrupt Travis's train of thought. "Let me TEACH you! You have such power – I CAN'T let it go to WASTE!"

"Much as it always appeals to me to get stronger, I'm gonna have to say, 'fuck off!' I'm gonna go get some fresh jungle air." Travis stepped out of the elevator and let the doors close behind him on the sputtering Joruus, heading for the garage. "Fucking basket case."

His Schpeltiger was muddy and scratched, as Smoker said, but seemed mostly fine. There were, among other things, a hose, soap, buckets, some rags, some wax, and an electric buffer in the garage, so Travis spent a solid hour and a half shining up his bike. He knew it'd just get messed up again, but he felt the impact left by his vehicle was stronger when the colors were brighter. Finally, when he'd had his fill of polishing the thing, he doubled back to the mess hall and grabbed a few bottles of water and Gatorade before setting out. He didn't notice the other pair of eyes watching his progress, as they were watching through his own mind.

**End of Chapter**

**The two henchmen at Sakyo's side have names not meant to be spoken by humans. For convenience, you can call them Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright. Yes, they are demons in human form.**

**My narration for Travis's mind is modeled a bit after Harry Lockhart's earlier in the tournament, thanks for asking. Travis's train of thought is clearly of a more malevolent bent, though.  
**


	4. Battle Two Part One

**Disclaimer: I don't own any characters mentioned here.**

**A Winner Is Two: Desperate Struggle**

**Battle 2, Part 1: Rise of the Sword**

Travis rode with unerring determination through the forest, weaving through its trees with the ease of a master smith taking a firm hold of his hammer. After some internal debate, Travis had decided to head to the eastern side of the mountain. A quick look at a map had told him that there was a nice riverside outpost there; Joruus (the crazy bastard) had formally taken the spot, but Travis doubted the fogey had left headquarters since the tournament began. Besides, he'd definitely keep harassing Travis anyway, so it didn't matter what he did with Joruus's stuff. He could floss his ass with Joruus's towels for all the difference it would make.

A spike of angry red pain burned through Travis's head, and he swerved, almost crashing into a tree before he could come to a brief stop and put one foot down. He thought the wounds weren't bothering him anymore, but then again, he hadn't sustained head wounds anyway… he shrugged and put it down to whatever crazy-ass hospital medication he was coming down off of. Fuck, he hated hospitals.

…Fuck. He hated headaches too.

He shook his head clear and continued on his path. At his speed, it shouldn't take him more than another five or so minutes to find the outpost.

A huge-ass jungle bug splattered all over his sunglasses. FUCK. "I wonder if I could still go back to community college," Travis said, very calmly. What could be worse than this?

Before he had time to realize the old lesson about tempting fate, a silver-haired kid sped past him, leaving a trail of explosions in his wake.

----

Haru narrowed his indigo eyes and, somewhat belatedly, shouted, "Silver Dive! Twelve Wings of the Explosive Dragon!" In the time it took him to spit out the full two titles of the attack, the man and his heavy motorcycle had both been tossed into the air. The man flew a bit farther, but neither had a particularly nasty landing. Good; Haru had been using Silfarion to tail the man since he had left BORED headquarters. He wanted to ask the man some questions, not murder him. He carefully advanced on his prone foe, muttering "Ravelt" to switch his sword back to its big, heavy, but very powerful default form. It wasn't surprising when the man rolled to his feet; he obviously still had some fight to him.

The stream of invective wasn't surprising either, until it failed to dry up. After a minute, the man was still shouting out every foul word Haru was familiar with and several that he was only now inferring the meaning of. "DAMMIT!" the man finally concluded, pausing to take off his glasses and wipe them on the bottom of his scale-print T-shirt. "This aggression will not stand! You… you must have a death wish, because I've been having a bad day. I mean I've been having a REALLY bad fucking day, and on a good day, you'd have just given me an excuse to fucking defenestrate you, so you'd better be ready for all sorts of torture because-"

"Do you work for the company that brought us here?"

"Well, no shit. There's nobody else on this hellhole who has vehicles, except maybe people who stole them."

"You need to stop people from killing each ohter." Haru raised his sword emphatically. "Right now." He hadn't spent six weeks avoiding battles in the forest and living off river bass and suspect berries to play checkers with the faculty. Had it been six weeks? He had lost track of time…

"Oh, sure, let me just ring up my boss," the man said kindly, brushing grass out of his hair. He took a small, sleek phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. His voice dripped with sarcasm. "Hello, Sakyo? Mr. Big Sword Kid down here in the fuck jungle thinks we should stop killing people for pay-per-view entertainment. What's that? Oh… okay!" He flipped the phone closed, although he clearly hadn't called anybody. "Do you know how much money is being made here? This tournament takes in, _on average_, thirty-five million dollars a day. Why don't you march right into the headquarters and make a counter-offer. Oh, that's right, you CAN'T, can you?"

"No," Haru admitted through gritted teeth.

"Well, then, how about this?" The man drew a white rod from a holster on his belt. It kind of looked like a fancy potato peeler of some sort; then the end extended several feet from the handle, and five bottle-cap-like doodads unfolded from the end. Five matching spots folded out at the top of the handle. "I'll cut you to pieces in front of the candid cameras. Every drop of blood you spill will be worth more than twenty-karat gold."

Haru sighed. "If I beat you, you'd better tell me everything you know about your bosses."

"Kid, if you beat me, I'll shine your fucking shoes for you, but the more likely outcome is that I mail what's left of you home in a mason jar. You're…" the man squinted through orange lenses at him, then gave up and peered over them. "You're Haru Glory, right? The shapeshifting sword guy. Okay, sounds like my kind of fight."

Haru was momentarily surprised, but overcame it. If this employee was wandering around in contestant-heavy areas alone, he probably had been briefed on them. He was probably strong, too. "Yeah, I'm Haru Glory, the Rave Master."

"Great. I've been so tense lately. A rave would help me unwind." Haru cocked his head to the side; Travis was making some kind of joke, but he didn't get it. "To be fair, I'm Travis Touchdown. This is the Tsubaki MK II, and you've seen all the shapeshifting it does already." Five beams of light came out of his sword and connected from the 'bottle caps' at the end of the blade to the ones at the hilt. It looked like a bat, or a club… made of glowing swords. It was clearly not a weapon of restraint. "And THIS is the Schpeltiger!" Travis kicked his motorcycle into a right-side-up position and hopped on. He turned it toward Haru, and the exhaust pipes suddenly spat fire as he accelerated with frightening speed. Haru leapt clear, not ready to counterattack yet, and watched carefully as Travis drifted into a 180.

_He's hardly exposed at all from the front, but totally exposed on the sides… however, that weird sword is on his right side to guard him, and I can't assume he couldn't move his sword to the other side. _ Haru reached a decision as Travis charged forward again. "Mel Force!" he cried, leaping forward and to Travis's left. Travis swung his fist at Haru, but missed both the boy and his sword, which was taking on a new, more ornate form, a purple and white blade with wing-like guards and spearhead and cross motifs. "Blow him away!" He held the flat of the blade out toward Travis, and a whirling gust flew out from the blade and caught him in the ribs, throwing him off the bike again. This time, Travis landed in thorn bushes with a new wave of screamed profanity, while the motorcycle simply kept going until Haru heard a soft crash in the distance.

"That's fucking it, man!" Travis burst out of the bushes, covered in thorns. "I can beat you without my bike. It'll probably be easier." Taking a deep breath, he settled into what Haru recognized was an iai stance. Due to the distance between them, Haru wasn't worried until the ground started shaking and lightning started crackling from Travis's blade to the nearby plant life. As Travis prepared to unleash hell with a cry of "Eat SHIT!", Haru decided it would be prudent to use Mel Force's recoil to launch himself up and toward Travis, and he was glad he did.

The area in front of Travis's blade looked like a small herd of circular saws had just passed through. The great gouges torn in everything extended far beyond Travis's maximum reach, beyond even Haru's previous position to leave gashes bleeding sap in the tree behind him. However, the blade was a bit shaky afterwards, and its lights had dimmed a little bit, so Haru decided this employee of the group running the tournament had left himself open. "Gravity Core!" The new form of Haru's blade was black and white, with a bulky guard decorated with chains and a wide white blade with black accents. Pointing it down, Haru plummeted like a lead balloon toward Travis with overwhelming force.

Unfortunately, Travis must've seen the attack coming, because he rolled out of the way. Gravity Core slammed into the ground and, even as it made a crater, sank nearly up to Haru's elbows. He realized far too late that he was now the one wide open. "Silfarion!" he shouted desperately, pulling the blade up, but he only got it halfway out of the ground before Travis had tossed his own blade high into the air and grabbed Haru just below each shoulder.

"Bad luck, kid. When I was skimming each profile, that Gravity Core form stuck out at me and I paid close attention. I knew what to look for." He pulled Haru into the air (forcing him to leave the Decaforce Sword buried in the ground) and spun him around sideways. By the time Haru realized he was looking up at the sky, it was too late. "My turn to call an attack out… Quebradora Con Giro!" His spine was slammed down onto Travis's waiting knee, and it felt like he might snap in half. When his vision stopped swimming, he focused on one thing and one thing only – Travis's little blade-collection-on-one-handle, dropping alarmingly toward him. It had a rather nasty-looking point on the end, which he hadn't noticed before but was now hard to put out of his mind. Haru put his reflexes to the test, and they didn't fail him – he managed to elbow Travis in the ribs and roll clear before the Tsubaki stabbed him in the heart.

His roll was stopped by the Silfarion's handle. He picked it up, wincing with each breath from the blow to his back, and held the blade defensively in front of him. It was a light blue piece of steel, the hilt and blade apparently the same piece of metal, with a darker blue guard that swirled around the base of the blade and curled down around to the pommel. "I'm sorry…" Haru gasped. "I'm clearly going to have to defeat you to get any information out of you. I won't kill you, but it'll hurt."

Travis laughed. "Come on, then, kid, if you think you can beat me with an attitude like that." Haru ground his teeth together, and leapt forward with a cry, pressing his attack. Silfarion's blows weren't very powerful by Haru's standards, but they rained down with exceptional speed; surely a heavy blade like the Tsubaki couldn't keep up.

But to his surprise, it did. Haru's entire body blurred with the rain of his two-handed swings, and Travis's right arm became a similar blur as he rushed to parry each attack. Sparks flew in every direction; only the dampness of the vegetation prevented a fire. Haru smiled; Travis wasn't tiring, but the light from his blades was dimming – it was clear Tsubaki had a limited charge. "This is it!" Haru cried, knocking Travis's blade out of the way with an upward swing and following with a thrust.

"I couldn't agree more!" Haru's eyes widened as Travis ducked down and pulled his sword with him, catching Silfarion between the center rod of Tsubaki and two of its beams, which held solid as concrete. Travis followed up with a heel kick that King Leonidas would be proud of, knocking Haru to the ground and dislodging his blade. Grinning, he held up the Mk II, but its beams all flickered and died at once. "Oh, come on!" Haru rolled to his feet and rubbed his sore ribs as Travis's weapon retracted, then blinked as he held it low and began to shake it.

"It looks like you're…" Haru began, but Travis cut him off.

"I know what it looks like!" he snapped. The Tsubaki gave a victorious beep and extended again. "This is how I recharge the battery, if you must know. You should feel honored; normally I only waste a whole charge on ranked matches."

Haru narrowed his eyes; this Touchdown character was being careless with his information. Now he knew when Travis had to recharge, when he was recharging, and could guess what drained the blade's batteries faster. It seemed like blocking rapid blows and making powerful attacks sapped it best. But while Silfarion was rapid, it wasn't strong enough to break Travis's guard, and speed alone clearly wouldn't do the trick.

He was jarred out of his tactical thinking (which wasn't naturally Haru's forte) by a telltale crackle. Travis's blades had appeared again, and he was holding the blade overhead as it took in energy again. "Bastard!" Travis growled as he brought it down, and Haru had to leap far to one side to evade the series of vertical shockwaves that flashed out of the blade. They traveled fast, but so did Haru. Travis had barely brought his blade up again before Haru was on him with another series of quick blows.

This time, though, Haru varied his pattern. After about a dozen slashes, he shouted "Explosion!" to shift his sword into its second acquired form. This blade had a red hilt and a straight orange blade with a matching guard. Simple black runes decorated the blade. It swung true with the leftover momentum from Silfarion, and Travis was forced to guard it. What happened next explained the sword's name.

----

Raidou narrowed his eyes. He had come across the two swordsmen only after they had begun to battle, attracted by the sound of explosions and battle cries. It had been a rough stay on the island, what with finding enough food for his whole team, and by pure misfortune he hadn't come across anybody. Well, nobody alive. His black and white uniform was stained with mud, sweat, and tree sap, his pale skin was a bit sunburned, and some stubble had crept onto his face since he had to shave and cut his hair with his katana. "Lilim," he muttered, calling her out from a green cylinder, "what do you make of these two?"

A girl appeared next to Raidou, a tan-skinned girl with chocolate-colored hair and very revealing white clothes. She was barefoot, but hovered in the air on a pair of small wings, and a thin, spade-tipped tail lashed playfully around her legs. "The pair of guys fighting?"

"Yeah."

"They're both filled with rage at each other, but the white-haired boy's anger is righteous, while the black-haired man is filled with a dark, murderous spite." She shuddered. "He gives me the chills." Suddenly, her shuddering stopped. "Actually, they're both under some sort of outside influence that's increasing their anger. If we manage to break the spell's hold, they can probably be reasoned with."

"Good. I know where the HQ is, but I want allies before I try to just kick the doors down." He drew another rod from his cloak. "We need to wait for an opening, a lull in the fighting, before I can intervene…"

----

Haru and Travis were thrown backwards from the force of the blast, each sporting singed clothing. Travis's feet had barely touched the ground before he leapt forward again with a jumping overhead strike. Surprised, Haru was still able to counter with an upward backhand swing. Any other blade would have deflected Travis slightly to Haru's right, but Explosion… well, exploded. Travis was hurled away again, this time landing awkwardly on a low tree limb, and Haru stumbled to one knee from the backlash. "Doesn't look like you can keep that up for long," Travis chuckled, pulling himself up into a proper crouch on the branch. "The blocked hits seem to be hurting you more than me." Haru just glared at him. "I'd like to see you try and make a sandwich with that sword. I don't know what would be more fun – slicing the bread or spreading the mayo." Haru's eyes lit up with inspiration. "What, did I give you an idea for a sandwich recipe?"

"No – what? – I just got an idea for how to beat you. Runesave!" Haru's sword began transforming again.

"Runesave? I'd be more concerned with coming up with a your-life-save blade," Travis jeered. "Wait; that one sounded better in my head." Haru's sword had taken on yet another new form – this one had a silver, ornately decorated blade with wavy edges, and a blue and silver, bracket-shaped guard. "Lifesaver? Lifesave? Roomsave? Gamesave? Aww, I can't think of anything funny."

"Come on!" Tired of waiting for him to attack, Haru leapt into the air and swung at the man.

"Okay, let's party!" Travis blocked, his free hand pulled back to punch Haru out of the air, but to his surprise, the Runesave sword began pulling energy from his beam katana on contact. It sucked in the light from all five of the Tsubaki MK II's blades in the space of a second – and then clanked dully against the main rod. "What the crap."

"Hah!" Haru planted his feet on the branch Travis stood on and kicked back, flipping to the forest floor. "Runesave doesn't cut physical objects, but it can cut energy and seal magic!"

"So, you drained my power? That's annoying." Travis assumed the position and shook the Tsubaki, but the beep it made was less than reassuring, like the beep of an out-of-order vending machine. "What the- dammit!" He shook more vigorously. Nothing.

"I didn't drain your battery – I _sealed _it!" Haru shouted triumphantly.

"You drained it, I saw you!" Travis shouted. "You just drained it to absolute empty so it can't recharge properly!" He put the Tsubaki back in its holster, and pulled out the sleeker MK III. "Fine… try this on for size!"

"I can just seal that one too!" Haru said. Smiling knowingly, Travis dropped from the tree branch and hit the ground in a low dash toward Haru. He pulled back the Tsubaki, and 'drew' the blade as he slashed forward; the beam materialized with no supporting rod, startling Haru a bit, but he still expected the attack and blocked with Runesave. What followed was a dangerously crackling surge of power as the energy from Tsubaki's battery began flowing into Runesave. However, after several seconds, it didn't slow; the conduit just kept growing in intensity. "What… what's going on?"

"This is the Tsubaki MK III, kid, a superior model. What's more, I've had it upgraded by its creator with a battery that never runs dry! You've created an infinite loop!" Now several beams of varying color and intensity were arcing from the Tsubaki's ornate guard into various points on Runesave's blade. "So… I wonder whose blade will explode first? Yours, or mine?"

Haru swallowed nervously, but tried to find his confidence. "The Ten Commandments Sword is powerful magic! Your sword will break first!"

"Yeah, you're probably right," Travis sighed. But he was still grinning unnervingly. "Then again, all this coursing energy looks dangerous. I wonder if one of us won't be vaporized, or just burned to ashes first. You're starting to look pretty crispy."

"Kohryu!" a strange voice called. Travis and Haru broke eye contact in time to see a strange, massive silver dragon flow between their blades, knocking them both aside and absorbing the massive loops of electricity that had been coursing out from Tsubaki. "Good, return for now!" As soon as the dragon appeared, he was gone. "Tam Lin!" Suddenly, an effeminate, platinum-blond man in dark blue and black armor and a gray cape appeared between Haru and Travis, facing Haru. He held a shining metallic spear and leveled it at Haru carefully. Travis angrily drew back his blade to let the interrupting lancer have it, but found his attack parried before it could start by a man with a white-trimmed black uniform, a violet cape, (formerly) shiny boots, a strange military hat, and pointy sideburns. He wielded a katana, which he had drawn and blocked Travis's blade with, as well as a revolver and several green-lit metal cylinders, which he hadn't. Offhand, Travis would've guessed they were small uranium rods, but that seemed unlikely. "You're under the effects of mind control," the man explained softly. "Let me help you."

"And you're Raidou something or other!" Travis shouted back. "But more importantly, you're interrupting our battle!" he pulled his sword away from Raidou and swung at him anew. Raidou parried expertly, but he wasn't as strong as Haru had been, and the force of the blow visibly rattled him. _What did he say about mind control? Come to think of it, I do feel something weird in my head._ Raidou continued to cautiously encircle Travis, moving to block him off from the other battlers. Travis circled right back, looking for anything that could be causing that feeling.

"Travis!" Haru shouted from behind Raidou. Travis spared a glance his way; Haru was engaging the lance user (who Travis still didn't recognize), and after trying Melforce and Silfarion with minimal result, had moved back to Explosion. "I'm not through with you yet!"

"Then help me take out these interfering idiots! I want to get back to it too!"

"Wait!" Raidou shouted. "I can help you guys. I just want to take down-" Travis realized he was about to declare intention to take down BORED. Not good; he didn't want both Haru and Raidou teaming up on him. Luckily, at that moment he spotted what could only be called a succubus half-hidden behind a fallen tree over Raidou's shoulder. She was obviously concentrating deeply on some sort of magic (her hands were glowing, and she was muttering), and looking directly at her made the weird feeling in Travis's mind worse.

"Look at that!" Travis shouted, pointing straight at her. She looked up in shock. He smiled wickedly at her, waiting for the gears in Haru's head to turn.

Haru blasted away the spearman with a blocked hit from Explosion. "It's some kind of demon!" he said through the smoke, then blinked at his current opponent. "They both are!"

_Oh, that's why I didn't recognize the spear guy, _Travis realized. "That demon bitch is trying to influence your mind!" he shouted, and Haru's expression was priceless.

Raidou cursed. "No, she was trying to free you from the influence you were already under-"

"Shut up!" Travis snarled, jumping forward and delivering two quick slashes. The first knocked Raidou's sword out of the way, and the second scored a shallow cut below his collarbone as he jumped back. _Nailed you, shifty bastard._ He began to focus on the blood before he even realized it. "Haru, this guy's a Devil Summoner!" he explained. "Nail him, and the others will disappear!

Raidou cursed. "Lilim, your cover's been blown. Just provide us with cover fire!"

"Roger that!" Lilim confirmed, floating into the air. At the same time, Haru knocked the lancer into the air and chased him into the air with Explosion. "Tetrakarn!" Lilim shouted, casting a sort of bubble over her fellow demon. Haru's attack seemed to reflect off his foe and the blast rebounded on him entirely, pressing him into the ground.

Raidou leapt up and away from Travis's next attack, then drew his revolver and squeezed off two shots; Travis deflected them with ease. However, Raidou managed to reach his lance-wielding demon in midair. "Now, Tam Lin! Cross Slash!" The lancer (Tam Lin?) seemed to pour power into Raidou's katana, which glowed green; Raidou then faced downward and slashed twice, releasing two powerful shockwaves downward. It hit Haru, who was still recovering from Explosion's last impact, and knocked him over, splitting his shoulder open; likewise, Travis didn't see it coming in time to do more than protect his face, and received a cut on both forearms instead. The attack concluded, Raidou and Tam Lin kicked off each other and bounced back toward their opponents. "I see I'll have to pound some sense into you two!" Raidou shouted, and his sword, still wrapped in green light, transformed into a large axe.

"How many guys am I going to run into with shapeshifting blades today?" Travis asked rhetorically. He darted forward, pressing his attack against Raidou; his axe was stronger than the sword, but too slow to keep up, and soon Travis saw an opening. _A punch to stun him, and a Hurricanrana will finish the job!_ "Die!" he pulled back his fist.

Unfortunately, Lilim appeared to be annoyingly fast. "Tetrakarn!" The bubble surrounded Raidou as Travis's fist coasted forward, and it suddenly felt like Travis was punching a trampoline. His fist rebounded and clipped his own ear, and Raidou shoved him back with the axe while pulling back for another swing.

"Maybe you'll be willing to listen once I get that sword away from you!" Raidou threatened. Travis wasn't listening anymore; the pain in his ear had totally changed his focus. Now he was eyeing the blood on his own arms; on Raidou's chest; on Haru's shoulder. He was only dimly aware that Haru was flat on his back, or that an axe was about to take his hand off.

Suddenly, it all line up in Travis's mind, and his eyes blazed. "This is the END!" he roared, and a dome of dark energy formed around his body. It instantly enveloped Raidou, and his movements were slowed to a crawl – his axe was still moving for Travis's wrist, but now it struggled for each inch. The dome took a second to cohere entirely, but then it rapidly began to spread.

----

"What is that?!" Haru gasped.

"Get back!" Lilim cried. "It's…" then she was caught in it, too, and her movement slowed painfully. It was like watching a DVD on frame-by-frame.

"Dark magic…" was all Tam Lin had time to hiss before the dome overcame them, too. It was like being trapped in tar for Haru – he could still perceive time at a perfectly normal speed, but everything seemed to take ages to perform. Even a blink was like closing and reopening a thick set of blinds.

Except for Travis. He moved at a perfectly normal speed. Grinning wickedly, he simply walked under Raidou's axe, and as Raidou's eyes slowly went wide, circled around him. He delivered a wicked backhand to the back of Raidou's head, and watched as he slowly began to react to it. "Idiots…" Haru struggled to communicate. Only a fraction of a syllable got out, but it got Travis's attention. "Oh, you're asking what happened? Well, I call this Cherry. It's a little world that appears sometimes when I get in the thick of battle. I don't know how it works, but people are too terrified to move in it, unless they're real killers like me." Haru's heart sank. Maybe he had been wrong when he decided Raidou was the bigger threat. But then, he had been going on things Travis told him, hadn't he? "Oh, don't look like that. Look, I can save you. Watch." Travis ran – no, he _jogged,_ real casually – over to Tam Lin, who had managed to turn to face Travis in the time since Cherry began and was now pulling back his spear to throw.

Suddenly, Lilim pulled herself free. "No!" She began moving at full speed again, and dive-bombed Travis, managing to catch him off guard. Her double punch didn't do very much to him, though, and as she pulled up, he laughed and slashed Tam Lin across the thighs.

"I'm sorry, is that what you were trying to stop?" He slashed Tam again for good measure, this time in the gut, before Lilim screamed.

"You baka, baka, baka…" She descended into wordless rage and grief for a moment, but finally spat out, "LILITH'S WRATH!" Travis turned, now sufficiently distracted, as a translucent figure, like a larger, more mature and imposing Lilim, appeared behind the succubus. The figure outstretched a hand, and an ephemeral viper struck out from it, reaching for Touchdown. He blocked it with his katana, and the snake latched on, engaging in a tug-of-war with him.

Haru couldn't explain it, but watching the (apparently, much weaker) demon fight back against Travis filled him with courage of his own. He managed to bring up his sword. "Million Suns!" he cried, and his Ten Commandments transformed into a new form: a gaudy blade, golden yellow with an orange guard and hilt, made from gracefully curved pieces of metal. It flashed with what could only be called holy light, and the murky dome that was Cherry crumbled around them.

"Awww, why'd you do that?!" Travis yelled. With a cry of rage, he tore his blade free, and the spiritual snake (and the woman bearing it) shattered into nothingness as well. Lilim dropped from the air, stunned, and Travis impaled her on the end of his Tsubaki.

"Lilim! Tam!" Raidou yelled, climbing to his feet. "Damn you…"

"You want her?" Travis asked mockingly. "Here, catch." He flicked her off his blade in Raidou's general direction; he caught her before she landed, and laid her down gently. He turned his back on the summoner and toward Haru, roughly shoving Tam Lin out of the way as the demon tried to climb to his feet. "Now, I was asking, _why did you do that?_"

"I shouldn't have listened to a word coming out of your mouth," Haru muttered. "I'm not a killer – not today, not ever – but I can't let you walk away from this battle with the ability to hold a sword."

"Huh… I'm surprised I don't get people giving me that speech more often." Travis smiled. "It must be that you're the only person left pretending you're not a killer." That was the last straw. Haru charged toward Travis with a roar. "Yeah! Have at me!" Travis returned.

**End Part 1**

**Travis's threat to defenestrate Haru isn't as painful as it sounds. Defenestration is throwing something or somebody out of a window. He's thinking of the word dismember. He's also careless enough to use Sakyo's real name in front of Haru, but he really doesn't care.**

**Raidou doesn't know Travis is an Enforcer. Travis doesn't exactly carry his keycard on his chest, and Raidou arrives after the Schpeltiger pulls an exit stage left, so he has no evidence to guess this.**

**That is Joruus performing the actual influence on Travis and Haru, naturally. Lilim doesn't have time to counteract his work before Travis spots her.**

**Why can Travis block an ethereal snake bite with his sword? Well, I don't know what the attack looks like in the game, but the way I interpret it is a huge spirit viper coming straight at you, and what good is a lightsaber if it can't parry the fangs of a spirit viper?**

**I promise Part II will have more of Raidou and his demons. Did Lilim survive? Will anybody survive? Stay tuned to find out.  
**


	5. Battle Two Part Two

**Shameful. Here it is, and it's a full 26 hours late. If the four magnificent judges don't vote in my favor, I don't blame them. I'm also sorry; even if Haru doesn't submit anything, they need to read over 50,000 words just for this battle! My heart goes out to them, and to their families. For only 15 cents a day, you can support them... okay, I'm done.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters used below, except the anonymous Dethklok henchmen.**

**A Winner Is Two: Desperate Struggle**

**Battle 2, Part 2: Fall of the Sword**

Raidou set his jaw as the two of them – Haru and Travis – clashed blades. Both of them were fighting with blades of light now, dancing their dance of blood as sparks rained around them. He tore his eyes away from the mesmerizing display and looked down at Lilim. She was still breathing. That, at least, was reassuring. "Lilim, nod if you can hear me." Her face screwed up in pain, she nodded. "I'm going to return you to the tube now. Is that alright?"

"I'm not sure…" she whispered. Blood was trickling from her lips, and Raidou bit his. The injury was severe; assuming her vitals were in roughly the same place as his, Travis missed her spine but probably hit her liver, and kami knew what else.

"Diarahan," a new voice interjected, and a sparkling sheen of magic enveloped Lilim. Raidou looked up at Tam Lin, who was leaning heavily on his spear with one arm while the other extended to cast the spell. Lilim breathed a sigh of relief as the wound closed… mostly. "It was a severe wound, probably mortal. I've done what I can; she can continue healing safely in the tube now."

Raidou nodded and softly called for Lilim to return. "Tam Lin…"

"You forgot I was here?" The fae smiled, a bit bitterly. "Don't worry; you're not the first." He gestured back to the fight behind him. The two had clashed blades; Haru's superior strength had pinned Travis against a tree trunk, his feet ten inches off the ground – but Travis was using those ten inches to drive a series of toe kicks into Haru's flat stomach, weakening his hold. "I hate getting brushed aside like that. Dark-haired bastard catching me off guard with his strange foreign magic…" Lin suddenly doubled over in obvious pain, but righted himself. "Sorry. Anyway, I'll be rejoining the fight as soon as I catch my breath."

"You're out of your mind," Raidou told him. "I'm calling you back and sending out Yoshitsune and Beelzebub."

"_Those _two, of all your options?"

"They speak the only language those two seem to understand."

"Master-" Tam Lin began to protest, but caught himself. "Just let me get in one good shot before you call me back."

"Fine. Go for it," Raidou said with a smile, drawing Yoshitsune's tube in preparation.

"Thank you. Now… Winged Fury!" Tam Lin pulled back his spear and let it fly, imbuing it with a good portion of his power. The spear spun towards Haru just as he used a strong punch with his off-hand to drive Travis into the ground, and he had to block with a swing from Million Suns. The entire forest seemed to explode with light as Tam Lin's lance drilled into Million Suns, seeming to unravel a bit of it and throw it all about.

"There's no way you can overcome this blade." Haru spoke through gritted teeth as the brilliance of the clash blinded all of them. "It carries the power of a Million Suns!" He swung the sword forward, punctuating his sentence and shattering the spear into its component enchantments.

It didn't matter. Tam Lin was already returned, and in his place, two new demons stood. One wore red samurai armor and a black hat, with a snow-white, elfin face. The other was a huge, terrifying-looking purple-black fly that stood on two legs like a man. A golden brown carapace covered its back, and huge red compound eyes the size of manhole covers dominated its face. The only clothing it wore (if it could be called that) was a necklace of human skulls around what could possibly be called its neck, and a skull-tipped scepter held in one of its four clawed hands. A black jolly roger glared out from each of its gossamer wings, and countless stingers on the tip of its abdomen dripped poison "What would you have me do, _master?"_ it asked, gathering up all the sarcasm an eldritch insect could possibly muster to conclude its greeting.

"See that black-haired man over there?" Raidou pointed with his katana. "Kill him. He is a heartless and unrepentant killer who has already nearly slain two of our number. As much as it pains me to say this, he's too dangerous to leave alive."

"With pleasure…" the insect lord swung his staff. "MORTAL! Hear me, for I am Beelzebub! I have been ordered to destroy you, and I will not disappoint!"

"Get in line!" Travis called, the distraction sabotaging his Spinning Leg Hook Belly-to-Back Suplex at a crucial moment and allowing Haru to roll to safety. "FUCK!"

"Perhaps you did not hear me! Hellfire!" Beelzebub aimed his staff, and a stream of flames roared forth from it. Travis managed to duck behind a tree, launching another volley of profanity, but an entire column of trees were struck by the attack and burst into flames, moisture be damned. Laughing, Beelzebub sauntered after his new quarry.

"What would you have me do?" Yoshitsune asked uncertainly.

Raidou pointed to Haru, who appeared to be considering lining up an attack at Beelzebub's back. "That fighter. He's gripped by a rage not his own, but he could be a valuable ally. He's difficult, and his sword shapeshifts. Don't kill him, but short of that anything goes." Raidou rammed new bullets into the chamber of his revolver. "The time for planning is over."

"This isn't like you, Raidou, but-"

"Go!" Raidou yelled, and Yoshitsune did. Raidou fumed as he followed, not realizing that he had now fallen prey to Joruus's machinations more thoroughly than either Haru or Travis.

----

"Come out, come out, mortal," Beelzebub fairly sang as he lumbered through the burning trees. "You can't hide forever, because if the smoke doesn't flush you out, my flies will." Travis silently gagged a bit from the high branches he was hiding among, where the flames hadn't reached yet. So the guy was a walking flea circus in addition to being a fire eater and an all-in-one freakshow? Well, that was just great. Then again, he was right. No point in hiding. Travis leapt out of his tree with his blade at the ready, bringing it down to stab right into Beelzebub's skull. Of course, he had failed to account for Beelzebub's compound eyes and their huge range of vision.

The creature wasn't fast, exactly; a more accurate description was that its size lent speed to the counterattack. Either way, it managed to bring up its scepter with a parry that was powerful enough to launch Travis back into the air. "Hellfire," it hissed again, shooting a powerful jet of flame after the assassin. Travis put his sword between the flames and his body and managed to part the stream somewhat, but it still singed both his shoulders and kept him hanging in midair for an uncomfortably long time. Well, the real discomfort was actually the drop afterwards. Either way, Travis decided he didn't like taking to the air very much after all. "That was pathetic," the insect rumbled as Travis climbed steadily back to his feet. "Where is the cold-blooded killer who posed a great threat to my master? He's pathetic, to be so afraid of you."

"You'll learn to fear me, bastard," Travis growled defensively. A burning branch fell just behind him, but he refused to flinch. Instead, he sank into the iai stance again, preparing for his low charged attack. "I've splattered bigger than you on my sunglasses today."

"Your attempts to enrage me are as ill-fated as your attempts to defeat me," the demon chuckled. "Hellfire!" Another blast shot from his staff, but this time Travis was ready. Without breaking his stance, Travis dodged to the side and leapt forward, evading the flames and closing in on Beelzebub before he could end the attack. Travis slashed horizontally at the end of his leap, forcing the demon to block with his bare talons, and they cracked under the force of the blow. Another of his insectoid arms swung out to swat Travis away, but he dodged the ironic fate of being a human swatted by a fly by carrying his attack into a front flip slash. This one Beelzebub blocked with his staff, but Travis followed up with a slash combo that simply outmaneuvered the giant bug, leaving some shallow cuts in his carapace. Finally, Beelzebub cried "ENOUGH!" and managed to bat Travis away with a parried staff blow.

"Not so high and mighty now that you're leaking bug juice, are you?" Travis sneered. "I'm going to send you packing, then I'll send your boss Mr. Spikeburns over to your place. I hope you don't mind hosting a party, because I give out a lot of one-way tickets."

"Don't presume to know anything about the afterlife, pasty one," Beelzebub spat. "It's far more complicated than somebody like you could understand."

"Pasty one?"

"Glacial Blast!" Beelzebub aimed his staff again, but this time a blast of ice and intense cold shot out. Travis blocked with another wide slash, but when the attack subsided, he found his sword arm frozen to his chest. "Fool," Beelzebub spat, stomping towards him with an alarming increase in speed.

"Ugh, you ass!" Travis slammed on the ice with his free hand, but to no avail. He didn't pay attention the demon fly lord bearing down on him until it was too late. Beelzebub's scepter crashed down on him, driving him several inches into the ground, winding him, and probably breaking a few of his ribs.

"Your torment has yet to reach its zenith, mortal! Mighty Blow!" Beelzebub pulled back his scepter in both right arms, and delivered a massive golf swing to Travis's prone form, sending him rocketing away on a low arc. Travis splintered right through the first tree he hit and hit the second hard enough to embed himself most of the way through the trunk. Groaning, he rolled out of the hole in the tree and fell to the ground, only for the broken tree to fall on top of him with an ear-splitting crash. Beelzebub set the collapsed tree ablaze with one more shot of Hellfire for good measure. "May this be mercy compared to your next life," he hissed ominously, before turning and engaging his wings. Improbably, they were large enough to carry him into the air, and he buzzed off, presumably to wherever Haru was.

"Get back here, you fucking chigger," Travis groaned weakly from under the tree. "…not finished with you yet…"

----

Haru gritted his teeth and pulled Million Suns away, but the samurai only took the opportunity to gain a bit of ground and clash blades again. _This is insane – another summoned fighter? Where did Travis and Raidou go?_ "What do you want from me?" he yelled, pushing his foe away.

"Ziodyne!" The demon aimed the point of one sword at Haru and shot a lightning bolt at him. Haru managed to block most of it, but the powerful shock still nearly knocked him off his feet. "Me? I don't want anything. But my master's instructions were explicit. I'm to occupy you until the situation turns in his favor. Have you had enough?" Haru nodded. "Too bad! Now duel me, fellow swordsman!" His two katana flashed as he charged forward.

"Blue Crimson!" Haru shouted, switching his sword yet again. This time it split into two straight-bladed, double-edged longswords, one red and one blue. He slashed outward with the red blade, and the surprised swordsman was engulfed in a wave of flame. It didn't seem to injure him, but it occupied him long enough for Haru to leap forward and deliver a trio of spinning slashes to his chest. The armor was enough to slow the blows, but not stop them completely, and the swordsman bled a bit as he fell flat on his back. Haru halted his attack, calming his racing heart with a single deep breath; if the Rave Stones hadn't increased his stamina to superhuman levels, he would've collapsed from the strain of battle by now. He wondered idly if that had happened to Travis yet.

It was also the power of Rave that allowed Haru to react as fast as he did when he heard the gunshots. He managed to dodge one entirely, but the other two bullets grazed his left shoulder and side, prompting a spike of pain throughout that side of his torso. Haru looked up, raising his swords, and spotted Raidou's dark uniform, framed against the rising flames in that direction. "Yoshitsune!" Raidou called, lowering his gun. "Can you continue fighting?"

"Of course!" Yoshitsune, the samurai Haru had been fighting, kicked his legs up and flipped to his feet. "They're only shallow wounds from a cheap shot. Heat Riser!" A rippling red aura encircled Yoshitsune. "I hope you're ready for round two, boy, because I won't be floored that easily!" He dashed forward with renewed speed and vigor, ignoring the wounds on his chest.

Haru blocked Yoshitsune's first few slashes and leaped over a double horizontal strike, trying to hit him from behind with a blast of ice. However, the swordsdemon evaded the blast with a quick sidestep and lashed out with his blades, aiming for where Haru was supposed to land. "Silfarion!" Haru reconnected his blades and used the speed boost Silfarion gave him to bounce sword-first off Yoshitsune's attack to a safe landing. He then turned and made a dash for Raidou, hoping to stun him with a few light blows.

"MAG Spear!" Raidou drew his katana, and it shapeshifted into a green, luminescent spear. His counterattack was a swift series of thrusts, and Haru was forced to jump to avoid it. "Heavy Shot!" Raidou drew his revolver with his free hand and fired, and to Haru's surprise, the bullet connected not with the strength of the previous shots, but with the force of a cannonball. Even the blocked shot disarmed Haru and sent him spinning into a tree trunk. As he slid to the forest floor, he saw the huge insect demon from before, Beelzebub, crash through the flames to flank Raidou.

"What would you have me do next?" Beelzebub asked.

Raidou eyed him briefly, before turning back to Haru. "Hold position for now." He marched over to Haru slowly, then leaned down next to him. "Listen… Haru, was it?"

Haru pulled back his fist and threw the hardest punch he could while lying on his side. Given that he had shifted the Main Piece of Rave to his fist while Raidou was looking at Beelzebub, this was a hard enough punch to spontaneously generate an explosion. Raidou was flung through the air, crashed through a tree branch, and became entangled in several vines before collapsing into some shrubbery, startling a family of oddly six-legged rabbits out of hiding. Before Yoshitsune or Beelzebub could react significantly, Haru was up on his feet and retrieved Silfarion, then backed up against a tree, wild-eyed and breathing heavily. "You guys stay away from me!" he shouted. He wasn't sure about Raidou or Yoshitsune, but they didn't seem like nice guys, and Beelzebub… well, it didn't take a genius to tell that something like that was Evil, with a capital E.

"Damn!" Raidou stood up, nursing his jaw with his sword hand. It looked like it might be broken. "Subdue him. Don't kill him!"

Haru clutched his weapon tighter. He wasn't going to let these summoned beasts defeat him, and leave him to their mercy. _Wait… summoned beasts… it's a long shot, but if it works… _"Runesave!" Haru shouted, switching back to the sealing sword.

----

Klokateer #311 bellowed an order to his team to stick together and sweep the forest to find the Contestant who started the fire. "Whoever did this, we need to know. Don't engage unless you're attacked!" He swept his hooded eyes over the damage. Burning tree… burning tree… fallen burning tree… his eyes widened as he noticed a man trapped underneath that last one. "Men, there's a guy under here! Help me out!" He wedged his halberd under the trunk and began to push. Two other burly Klokateers also pushed, using a tower shield and a bastard sword so that they wouldn't be burned. They gasped collectively as they found a scorched Travis Touchdown underneath the log. "My lord, are you alright?"

Touchdown sat up instantly, although he looked pretty dazed. "I'm fine," he mumbled. "Where are those two? Glory and Kuzu… kuzu… I'm gonna kill them!"

"With all due respect, milord, you should retreat… your injuries…"

"What are you, a doctor?" Touchdown snapped.

#311 straightened. "Actually, milord, I left my third year at medical school to become a Klokateer. You cannot simply continue fighting after being trapped under a burning, 25-foot-tall tree."

"Bullshit!" First one of Touchdown's eyes, than the other, focused on #311 and glared. The effect was somewhat diminished. "I'm fine, I've been hit with worse than this."

"We'll come with you, then, milord." #311 raised his halberd for emphasis, and his fellow henchmen followed in kind, showing off their respective weapons: a greatsword, a shield and battleaxe, a spiked chain flail, and an AK47.

Touchdown grumbled. "No. They're crazy tough, and I work alone."

"I insist, milord." #311 didn't add that Ofdensen had ordered them to support any Enforcer, even against that Enforcer's orders.

Touchdown turned and marched through the flames, grumbling some more. Finally, he said, "I'm going to go fight them. If you want, I guess you can come." Smiling proudly under his hood, #311 waved the men to follow Mr. Touchdown.

----

"Ziodyne!" Yoshitsune's lightning crackled out, but Haru blocked it with Runesave. The blade easily absorbed the bolt.

"Hellfire," Beelzebub rasped, and Haru turned and blocked that attack just as easily.

Raidou frowned, still clutching his stinging jaw with one hand. Haru just wouldn't give up, and he wouldn't listen to reason, either. Lilim would have the best spells for restraining him, but she was too wounded to battle. His two out-of-commission demons were both healers as well; he should have gone into this battle at full power from the very beginning instead of just trying to interrupt a battle and forge an alliance. He sighed. Hindsight was 20-20, after all.

Beelzebub let up on the Hellfire. "Humans are coming. Several of them." His voice dripped with bloodlust.

"You're not killing them," Raidou mumbled numbly, trying to speak without opening his jaw.

The petulant glare Beelzebub shot Raidou was all the opening Haru needed. "Silfarion!" He dodged Yoshitsune's newincoming attack and dashed toward the insectoid demon, then switched back to Runesave mid-dash.

Beelzebub wasn't able to react until Haru was right on top of him. "Glacial Blast!" Runesave cut through the stream of extreme cold as though it wasn't even there, and embedded itself in his staff, which quickly began to disintegrate. "Bah!" Beelzebub dropped the staff and stepped back, raising his four clawed arms. "Maziodyne!" Bolts from the blue suddenly began to rain down around the battlefield, striking all over. They conspicuously avoided Raidou and Yoshitsune, but the foliage wasn't so lucky, exploding all over the place. Several bolts arced down at Haru, but he held Runesave above his head, and it absorbed even these. From there, all it took was a wide slash to bring the sealing sword into Beelzebub's abdomen. "Hurk!" The blade was more effective than Raidou could have imagined – the Lord of the Flies immediately began to dematerialize on contact with it. He managed one last cry – "You're monkey people, all of you!" – before he turned into a stream of green light and flew back into his tube

Raidou tried to release him again, going so far as to call his name twice. It didn't work; his tube was securely sealed shut. "Impressive," he finally admitted.

"Give up," Haru said triumphantly, holding his sword threateningly in Yoshitsune's general direction.

"If I do, will you listen to me?"

"Umm… okay?"

"THANK YOU!" Raidou yelled, then winced as his jaw threatened to break in half. Haru and Yoshitsune both winced sympathetically as well; it must have looked as painful as it actually was. "Anyway…" he continued through gritted teeth… "I'm looking for allies to help bring down BORED, the company that's running this tournament."

"What… really?" Haru looked confused. "I was trying to take down the company, too! That guy I was fighting was working for them!"

"There they are!" Raidou turned to see a group of heavily armed men dressed in black hoods and black uniforms that left their arms bare. His heart sank when he saw Travis was at the front of them, although he seemed bloodied, burnt, and not a bit shaky on his feet. "Kill them!" One of them levied a gun and opened fire, forcing Raidou, Haru, and Yoshitsune to take cover behind some of the trees that Beelzebub hadn't managed to ignite.

"Alright, I'll team up if you're still willing," Haru muttered.

"About time," Raidou muttered back. "I'm deploying another demon. This one will heal us, and then he should be enough to take those guys back there out. Yoshitsune's bullet-resistant as well."

"I can still fight," Haru added helpfully.

"Really?" Yoshitsune asked. "Man, you're like a machine."

"It comes with being a Rave Master."

"What's a Rave?" Yoshitsune and Raidou asked in unison. Haru looked like he just might pop.

----

The Klokateer stopped firing. He hadn't hit shit, to Travis's annoyance but not his surprise. "You guys are seriously going to get yourselves killed. Last warning."

"We're not leaving," a Klokateer whose tattoo identified him as O66 asserted. In a flash of green light, a strange new demon appeared. 'Demon' was a misleading term, since he looked like an angel except for having steel plates for skin. His hair was blond, and he wore a white toga with a gold cross; huge white wings billowed out behind him. "No, not even now."

"Metatron, heal Yoshitsune, Haru and I!" Travis growled as he heard Raidou's voice from behind the trees.

"Mediaharan," the angel intoned in a deep, rich voice. He sounded just like how Travis expected God to sound… and also not a little like Alan Rickman. A divine light emanated outward from the angel and created flashes behind several trees. Travis readied his beam katana.

"Now, attack!" Raidou ordered, his own voice louder and clearer. He appeared from behind a tree and began firing his revolver at Travis, who effortlessly blocked the shots with Tsubaki. A samurai demon ran out from behind another tree and charged the gun-wielding Klokateer, although his shield-bearing comrade jumped in the way.

"Wind Cutter," Metatron spoke, and a current of wind blasted several of the Klokateers off their feet.

"Silfarion!" Haru dashed out from behind yet another tree. The Klokateer rifleman immediately began to fire at him, but Haru zigzagged through the hail of bullets and quickly got into melee range.

Travis blocked his way, a well-timed punch to the shoulder sending Haru spinning to the ground. "Fuck! You guys have just allied them against us!" he tried to cut down Haru as he was rising, but the so-called Rave Master just dashed around him and proceeded to disarm the rifleman with a kick. Elsewhere, Yoshitsune shoved back the halberdier he was now clashing with. "You guys are so useless!" Travis shouted. "I told you you're gonna get-" he was interrupted by the halberdier, the doctor-wannabe from before, falling back onto his sword. "…killed…" he stared blankly at the man wriggling weakly on his blade.

"#311!" the rifleman weakly shouted from where Haru stood on him as he fought with a greatsword-user.

Travis deactivated his blade, and #311 slumped to the floor. "A pity… we weren't more help… milord…" he mumbled. A weak new surge of blood pumped from the hole in his chest with each new heartbeat, until finally the flow stopped as the man's head lolled to the side.

Travis couldn't ignore it. It was just… too… _funny._ "Heh… hehehehh…" he tilted back his head and laughed, bringing an immediate halt to the fighting. "HA! AAAHAHAHA! YOU STUPID FUCKS!"

"Milord?" the rifle-using Klokateer asked cautiously. Almost casually, Travis brought his sword down through the man's neck, prompting Haru to jump back in alarm. Laughing like a hyena, Travis turned and cleaved Haru's former opponent in twain diagonally. He dashed over to the shieldbearer, who had lost his axe and been reduced to cowering under Yoshimitsu's blows, and cut off both his arms before disemboweling him. His vision began to shift, as every color except for black and white and red fell away from his perception.

He turned to O66, the last Klokateer standing, who had been trying and failing to harm Metatron at all with his flail. "You know what's coming, don't you?" Travis said, his voice oozing with unhinged glee.

O66 dropped his weapon and held his arms out akimbo. "Make it brutal," he said simply. Travis dashed forward and impaled him, lifting him into the air on his beam katana, and the bottom dropped blissfully out of his mind.

----

Joruus almost choked as he snapped out of his battle meditation. What the hell was that? That strange power Travis referred to as Cherry was one thing – it was a novel application of Force powers, a very strong if narrow application of short-range Battle Meditation abilities in its own right – but this… this could only be described as the Dark Side completely overwhelming Travis's mind. Surely it was irreversible, but the familiar way Travis greeted it – even seemed to try and achieve it – suggested that he had experienced it before.

"I must save that boy's soul while I still have time," he murmured.

----

Raidou watched in shock as Travis, laughing all the way, butchered what were apparently his own men. "May God have mercy on that boy's soul," Metatron gasped, and Raidou nodded.

"There's one tiger **I** wouldn't want to tame," Yoshitsune whistled.

Travis turned to them, covered in blood, and grinned slyly. It was all a joke to him… a damn _joke._ "What the hell was that all about?!" Raidou shouted.

"Oh, don't be like that." Travis laughed. "I was just saving you guys the trouble. Wouldn't want you dirtying your precious little hero hands in your final hours." Raidou found himself rooted to the spot in a mix of terror and morbid fascination.

"Be careful!" Metatron warned. "There is a powerful mental spell emanating from this man, fueled by his bloodlust." Raidou swallowed and nodded.

"No spell, no tricks." Travis laughed. "This is all _me._ Who wants a piece of this? How about you, Spikeburns?" Raidou found himself beginning to step forward against his will, but Metatron put out his arm and he found himself able to move normally again.

"Heavy Shot!" He cried, and fired his magically enhanced bullets. Travis's arm was a blur as he parried them; the force of the shot sent him reeling, but he only leaned back and let loose another peal of maniacal laughter.

"No? No takers? Not even Sengoku-face?" Suddenly, Yoshitsune was running towards Travis.

"Stop!" Raidou warned.

"I-I can't…" Yoshitsune stuttered, but then his resolve, or something like it, strenghtened. "I can't back down from this challenge! Brave Blade!" He tossed both katanas at Travis, but the Enforcer just stood sideways, sword forward, and let one blade pass to each side of him. The swords rematerialized in Yoshitsune's hands, and he swung them down at Travis's forward shoulder. "DIE!"

Travis's beam katana flashed out once, and suddenly Yoshitsune's hands were separated from his arms, the blades lazily falling behind Travis. "Cranberry…" he performed a leaping backflip over his foe and cleaved horizontally through his waist on the way down. "…Chocolate…" Spinning on his landing, he stabbed backwards and impaled Yoshitsune through the chest back-to-front, lifting his upper half off his newly separated lower half. "… SUNDAE!"

This attack happened in the space of three seconds. Yoshitsune had only time to express slight surprise before finding himself dismembered and on the end of Travis's blade. "How… shameful…" he gasped, and was still.

Raidou's jaw simply dropped. This was, for him, a completely unprecedented experience. He fell to his knees, shaking. "Jouhei!" Metatron looked back, concerned. "We have to retreat!"

"N…NO!" Haru had, apparently, shaken off Travis's aura again. "I'm not going to let this continue!" He pointed his finger at Travis. "That BORED would hire a monster like you is proof that they must be stopped! Starting with you!" Haru's sword changed shape one last time, taking on the form of a simple but elegant white, straight-bladed longsword. "Ravelt, the World Rave, the Dispeller of Evil, the Holy Sword!"

Travis smiled and pulled up his blood-smeared glasses with his free hand. His eyes were shining red, and under his bloodstained, scythe-shaped eyebrows, the effect was quite prominent. "Bring it." He casually tossed the samurai demon's dismembered corpse toward Haru. The Rave Master dodged the body and rushed Travis, but he was beginning to laugh again, that horrible laugh…

----

Travis woke up. The setting sun was shining red down on him, but something was amiss. He inhaled deeply, and immediately went into a coughing fit. Inhaling hurt, and the air was thick with the smell of blood. His blood? He tore his eyes down from the beautiful sunset, deciding he had better stop waking up with no idea where or how injured he was before it became a habit.

He was fucked up in a general sort of way, but nothing life-threatening. More alarming was that he was holding a severed head. He yelped and dropped it, then looked around. Blood. Blood. Body parts. Gore. More blood. What kind of bender had he been on? Blood on the grass, blood on the trees, blood on the shrubbery, blood _all over his body…_ he suppressed a shudder. This was like beginning a nightmare with a hangover.

He looked back down at the head, and recognized it. It was Haru Glory. He looked pretty angry, as if to say, _Thanks a lot for this! Beheading me… hell, you just ruined my week._ Travis's eyes drifted over to a tree trunk, and saw the Ten Commandments sword embedded in it. Haru's right arm still held it, for what it was worth. Up on a moderately high branch of the same tree was Haru's torso, along with one and a half legs.

Haru… what had happened? He had been fighting Haru and… Raidou, and some of Raidou's demons. Some Klokateers had been there too. Travis looked around, and saw several Klokateer bodies a distance away, by some burned trees.

So what had happened to Raidou? Travis looked around some more and almost ran into Raidou's fist. It was sticking out of the tree he had woken up against. Just… buried in the tree, sticking out just below the elbow and stuck in there God knows how much farther. His revolver was among the roots of the tree, just below the arm; Travis idly noted that Haru maintained a stronger post-mortem grip than Raidou. So where was the rest of him? There was more blood than Travis had ever seen in his life… more than when Jeane had killed his parents… more than the studio where he met Destroyman. Maybe the rest of Raidou had just exploded, like something out of when Travis played Mortal Kombat.

A shuffling noise and a wheeze caught Travis's attention. He turned around and saw what was left of Yoshitsune dragging himself toward him. "You'll pay for this, bastard…" Yoshitsune coughed. "You… will… burn…"

Travis pulled out Tsubaki and drove it into Yoshitsune's forehead, right between his eyes. That finally shut him up. Travis shuddered as he retracted the laser blade. It was surreal to even think that kills like this were possible, now that the bloodlust had subsided. To think that he'd done it himself… Travis collapsed against the tree, and grabbed Raidou's revolver. He stared at it long and hard. "What have I let myself become?" he whispered, idly tapping the revolver against his forehead. "I need some help…"

----

"Jouhei…" Metatron repeated, almost begging. "Jouhei Kashima, please respond." Raidou's face was an unresponsive, wide-eyed mask. He had suffered several deep cuts, and more seriously, the loss of his left arm just below the shoulder, trying to escape the frenetic storm of death that Travis Touchdown had become. "Jouhei, I've stopped the bleeding, but your arm will not be so simple to replace." No response; perhaps the most serious damage had not been physical trauma, but mental. "Please, Jouhei. We cannot linger here." Metatron's own wounds (in addition to slash and stab wounds, one wing had been nearly severed and now hung limply) were left ignored in favor of treating his master. Since arriving on the island, he had lost contact with one master… he would not allow the other to be silenced as well.

"I thought I, of all people, knew demons," Raidou muttered. Leaning on his sheathed katana, he struggled to his feet. "I thought I knew evil. Now, I can't believe my hubris. I have seen true darkness in a man's heart, Metatron, and I realize I don't yet know anything about demons."

**End of Chapter**

**You don't know how much of a bitch it was finding pictures of Haru's swords. Srsly. Google image search, Wikipedia, TVtropes, Rave Master Wiki… nothing. I eventually had to hit Photobucket and struck something there. It may have been fool's gold – I can't verify the accuracy of my descriptions of the Ten Commandments' appearances.**

**I know now that Raidou not recognizing Travis clashes with one of Raidou's intermissions (and more heavily, one of Nero's). Not to call non-canon, but… I don't regret forgetting that chapter, or going against it. It had the Enforcers attacking for the purpose of RS's story, against any logical motivation.**

**The flames from Beelzebub's direct Hellfire attack are strong enough here to light even damp trees on fire. However, that residual fire isn't supernatural or strong enough to dry out nearby trees, and the rainy season was pretty recent, so the forest fire isn't spreading.**

** I know sealing magic qualifies as mind magic by Persona's standards, and Beelzebub should be immune. I can only indulge those rules so far; sealing magic simply does not make sense as mind magic. I did, however, make Metatron immune to the mental portion of Cranberry Chocolate Sundae.**

** Yes, I left Raidou alive. I was planning to since shortly after Eshtar counter-challenged him. Why? I think Raidou has more character growth left, and honestly, I just wanted to. I think I've wanted to cripple a character and spare them ever since jjp masterfully did it to the Bride. Of course, he doesn't get off unscathed – losing your left arm, revolver, and one of your more reliable demons in one battle can really throw off your game. The other demons are fine, though – Tam, Lilim, and Metatron will heal (probably – that's up to RS), and I image the seal on Beelzebub expired with Haru.**


End file.
